Projects / Inspire

Inspire

INSPIRE is a Kent Schools’ Education Olympics Legacy Programme to ensure that the momentum from the London 2012 Games is maintained and to maximise the clear benefits that this brought to education.

In 2014, as part of the INSPIRE Culture Strand programme, Music for Change worked with  5 schools in Maidstone; Valley Park, Allington Primary, Aylesford CP School, East Borough Primary, and Sutton Valence Primary to take part in a cultural excellence partnership celebrating the musical heritage of Great Britain.

We delivered 76 workshops over the course of the project, reaching a total of just over 1150 young participants.  The project began with a Big Arts Day in which participants gathered at Valley Park school to spend a day working together exploring the theme, and planning for a collaborative piece to be performed two weeks later.

Workshops gave young people and their teachers the opportunity to develop new creative skills and to learn about culturally diverse art forms and practice. This was a unique opportunity for young people to work with artists from all over the world, learning about different art forms including gospel, R‘n’B and blues vocals; West African drumming, dance & storytelling; Calypso music; contemporary and traditional Indian dance; South African singing and dance; and poetry, lyric and song writing.

Workshops enabled young people to develop new creative skills, which helped to build participant’s confidence in their own artistic abilities. All workshop leaders asked young people to shape and inform the development of workshops and to add their own creative input, be this through lyric-writing, creating a song, tune, dance or rhythm for the group to work with.

“Pupil’s confidence grew enormously.  One pupil was very shy before but at the final performance she sang loudly and proudly!”  Teacher from Sutton Valence Primary School

 

Inspire Performance Day

Inspire Performance Day