Introduction

Building upon our working relationship with Larkmead School, we met with the Arts Department to discuss ways of continuing to work with their music students.

The school are really keen to  provide an array of projects that might encourage more students to consider taking G.C.S.E Music as an option at the end of year 9.

Context

Over the last few years Larkmead School and others in Abingdon have seen a sharp decline in the take up of music as a G.C.S.E subject due to the pressures of the EBacc. In addition to this many students starting in year 7 have not had as much exposure to music education as they have done in the past so the school wanted to work with us to develop a selection of projects that would develop an increased appetite for music to be taken up.

To deliver this project we brought on board Zahra Tehrani from the Young Women’s Music Project to work with us.

The school supported by authorising students from across year 9, 10 & 11 to come off timetable and attend the sessions.

The Story

Week 1

We organised the group into 5 separate bands, one of these groups had a music tech focus.  The bands all worked in separate spaces and Zahra was able to lend support to each group throughout the course of the session. Song writing played an integral part of the first session as it helped the students to sketch out initial ideas for what they wanted to create.

Week 2

The groups continued to work on their song ideas, trialling different instruments and styles, and began to rehearse for and end of project showcase. 

Week 3

With the tracks almost complete the students spent the first ½ of the session rehearsing what they had been working on. They were then able to perform their creations to the wider group for the end of project showcase.

Impact on Participants

Please see the quotes etcion and doiwnlkoad the attached case study.

Next Steps

Since the completion of this project we met with Larkmead school to debrief and plan for the next stage of our work with them.

We have decided to strategically target year 7 and year 8 pupils.  The reason for this is  it would allow us more time to work with the pupils before their options and we could also generate more activities for and with them.

We are going to return to Larkmead in the New Year (2017) and work with them in exploring music technology and how it can be used with students in school.