Returning to live music!

Edsential Musicians had been rehearsing for several weeks; carefully selected pieces of music to accompany a well-loved children's story which would be shared in our EYFS Creative Music-Making Leaps and Bounds project school 'bubbles'.

We knew from Government guidance, and responses from ACE, Youth Music and Music Mark, that we would be able to share live music if the risk of transmitting Covid-19 had been mitigated as far as possible - we were also determined to end our funded project with live music for our children!

Each visit was planned carefully with each setting; schools had slight variations to implementing safe working practices and these needed to be respected alongside our own risk assessments in place to protect our staff. 

Edsential Music managers worked with our Health and Safety adviser to create a detailed Risk Assessment for all types of in-person provision for Autumn Term 2020; curriculum teaching, instrumental and vocal ensembles and teaching, and delivering CPD, and this included our Roadshow. Please do get in touch if you would like a copy of this! Rather than amend the full Risk Assessment, we created a questionnaire which would be considered alongside both our and our school's provision - this is attached. The document guided both tutors and schools through finding agreement to ensure as safe delivery as we were able and, in some cases, this was not possible, so we did not visit all our settings. As you can see, we used a length of voile (also risk-assessed as a possible Trip Hazard!) to mark the safe distance in a child-friendly way between the classes and musicians - which everyone adhered to, as well as keeping safe distance between each musician.

What we found was how much longer planning our delivery timetable took as teachers needed to review with senior leaders, and the national guidance was frequently updated. Schools cancelled at short notice as bubbles were sent home, or staff were poorly. We did not want our children to miss this final instalment of our funded project so approached Future Yard in Birkenhead (also Youth Music funded) who offered us their venue at no cost, but we paid in full for the amazing team of technically brilliant staff and delivered a virtual Roadshow - see image below - for all our settings - who were thrilled to see their tutors 'on the telly'!

Whilst it was more complicated to achieve, the response from the children was phenomenal: we will continue to offer live music whenever possible, using carefully planned activities, properly risk assessed because of the countless benefits creative music-making offers our children, summed up by one headteacher:

The pupils were just enthralled, amazed and in awe to see 'real' music coming from 'real instruments', an experience outside many of our children's everyday lives, and so very valuable... the power of music, particularly in these challenging times, cannot be underestimated... please can I thank you and your team again, as the benefit of this experience has been immeasurable.

Cate Madden

Culture Lead and Primary Music Adviser

Edsential CIC