The Beat Goes On

A blog by Daniel,  the Learning & Development Manager at Templesprings.

Before we started the Audio Ambitions programme, we all went back to the centre before the lessons started to spend a day on cleaning the whole centre. During the lockdown, the centre was virtually deserted, and we had to clean and dust everything so that we got ready for the first lessons after the lockdown. It was quite strange to come back into Grays after the lockdown and having the students back into the centre was a refreshing experience as I get to experience some sort of normal.

Over the six weeks I have been working with students to make them play songs confidently and that also helped one student to get ready for her rock school debut exam. Each week, we had two days of online lessons where we go through the pieces and guide them to complete their Arts Award portfolio. And then the students come to our centre in a bubble session on another day later in the week where they have an in-person lesson and they also go through each of the teacher’s individual projects.

My project was the music performance project where each student in the programme performs a piece along with a live band. While planning the project, I had experimented with using Zoom to see if a band can jam along to make music in a group but I ended up deciding that be show playing the band in the centre as it is much easier as it requires less technical equipment but yet gives a professional audio output. And all of the students have had fun with playing their songs for their project and my students feel happy about their performance as it inspired them to do more performances if there are more opportunities to do so.

I am also the team leader of the media team and I have trained two young people in our C3 Youth Programme to take and edit photos and videos of the in-person bubble sessions. One of them is an upcoming YouTuber and the other likes photography. Although they initially had hardly any experience in using effects to edit the photos and videos, my training proved useful as they are able to use appropriate tools to make the photos and videos interesting and professional. Over the 6 weeks, they have done a brilliant job in capturing high-quality media and editing it to make it as professional as they can and they also collaborated with the social media team to post them onto our social media platforms.

While I am not teaching the students, I provide guidance to the media team and I also did some tech support work from connecting the computers to the screens to getting extra tablets to do the Kahoot games. The challenge is that the centre gets fast paced but I was able get everything in order in a calm and collected manner. But overall, it is a fun summer programme as I get the chance to interact with the students in person and provide extra guidance in both online and in-person settings.