Key Stage 1 Music project - a year in review
As we embark on a new year of projects with primary schools in Tower Hamlets, we look back on what made 2012 great!
Thanks to our grant from Youth Music's Musical Progression module, we were able to run several projects last year, bringing orchestral music to Year 1 and 2 pupils in Tower Hamlets schools.
The project consists of three main elements:
1. Workshops in primary schools and training for teachers
2. Specially designed schools concerts for participating schools
3. A family music day in the summer term
Our workshops in schools always focus around a particular theme. In May we had a sporting theme to fit in with the upcoming Games (you can read about it in our previous blog post here: http://network.youthmusic.org.uk/resources/blogs/city-london-sinfonia/city-london-sinfonia-tower-hamlets-ks1-workshops-rhythm-and-pul), and in December we focused workshops around Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. Children worked with our workshop leader, Claire Bloor, to write their own lullabies, helping to get their very own Clara (Claire!) to get to sleep. We were able to tie this theme into one of the school's topic for the term which was all around the book 'Can't You Sleep, Little Bear'. Claire's teddy bear became a central character in the story of the workshops and teachers were able to tie this into work they were doing across other subject areas.
The schools concerts were a great success last year. Our Nutcracker themed concert involved a young ballerina which was a first for us and a huge hit with the children. We're now trying to think of ways of building dance into some of our future projects (though it's a challenge to ensure that it doesn't take away from the impact of the Orchestra!). We also discovered the wonderful venue Oxford House in Bethnal Green, where we performed our December schools concert. It has a lovely little studio theatre, which was the perfect size for our 13 piece orchestra, 120 children and around 50 adults. It also has a great cafe (which was a hit amongst the musicians!). I would highly recommend the venue to anyone looking for an intimate performance space in East London. We will be using it again for future schools concerts.
Last year, we also ran our first family day at the Whitechapel Idea Store. This was in partnership with Spitalfields Music and went extremely well for a first go! We knew that it would be a challenge to encourage families to come out on a Saturday morning to listen to orchestral music in a library, but we managed to get a really good crowd and lots of participation in our pre-concert activities as well as throughout the concert. The concert was based on a Sea and Sky theme and we had lots of flying fish and Thieving Magpies which children made and used throughout the concert. The Idea Store were really pleased with the event and we are currently in the process of planning a bigger and better family day for 2013... Watch this space!
We continue to get really positive feedback from participating schools and lots of schools wanting to participate again with other classes and teachers involved. We're about to start our first project of 2013 in 4 new schools which will be based around Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin. We're looking forward to meeting 4 new classes and introducing them to the wonderful world of orchestral music!
-Gillian Hunter, Education Manager, CLS