Edmonton Glee

Professional development for school music leaders was offered through the Arts Award assessor training as well as more informal opportunities such as the initial planning session with the professional music leaders.

All schools were offered the opportunity for their music leaders to attend the Arts Award Assessor training.  The Explore and Discover level was organised as a group session and delivered locally at one of the participating schools which made it easier to access.  Feedback was extremely positive and participants particularly enjoyed being able to share their experiences with people doing similar work in different schools/settings.  They all found the course trainer, supplied through the Arts Council, very inspiring and felt that this had increased their own motivation even more.

Secondary schools were offered the opportunity for their music leaders to attend the Arts Award Bronze level assessor training and two of the three schools took up this offer.  The staff who attended were again very positive and enthusiastic about the training and reported that they are now more knowledgable about how to support their students in achieveing accreditation for the Arts Award. Both participants highly recommended the course.

In future we would make it a requirement for all schools to send at least one music leader on an Arts Award Assessor training and would highly recommend it to other projects, paticularly the group session.

The initial planning session was used as an introduction to the project, explaining the aims and outcomes we wanted to achieve as well as introducing schools to the provider, Pineapple Performing Arts.  A highlight for the school music leaders was the opportunity to try out some potential themes/genres for themselves.  For example in one 30 minute session the group were taught by a professional singer from musical theatre to perform "Naughty Children" from the musical Matilda, which they all thoroughy enjoyed and they said that it gave them a better idea of what to expect from the project and the professional music leaders.