Reflections on the last year

Another year in music - and what a year it has been with some incredible highs and lows! Firstly we had our two summer schools - with a punk-rock focus this year. One for young people 16-25 yrs who have learning disabilities, and the other for those under 16, with some support provided by those who had participated at the first summer school. These were great fun, as can be seen on the video - "You Can Have The Cake!" 

We began to recruit for our new youth-funded programmes during the summer, and were ready to start with these from September. 

Next highlight was Neil Card, our Director of Music, being shortlisted for, then winning, the most inspirational music leader of the year award at the Youth Music Awards in Battersea. We were all thrilled for Neil at Tang Hall SMART! We had known for some time he was exceptional, and it was good to see this recognised by the judges. 

Then it was the  usual round of concerts, exam work, employability work, recordings.  The video of Ewan, Rebecca, Sue and Neil was taken as a warm-up before an improvised Blues piece as part of RSL Level 2.

And everything was fine -  until Covid-19 began to spread and we found ourselves navigating Lock-Down. This has meant changing our delivery to a virtual-college model which has been a challenge - but we are pretty much there now, up and running in this strange new way!