Sacred Space – Teaching the world to sing – The Students Report
Cathy Lamb, ‘Lichfield Cathedral School’.
Common Ground: outreach projects across the country. They have organised a singing outreach conference to remind people of the huge amounts of good work they do for the community in the cathedral. They also have another one organised for next year already.
Why is it crucial for us to be at forefront?
She spoke of how it can widen children’s horizons and futures in music and education. She feels as though schools teaching music classes should teach the children a lot more about musical experience and not just have them ’banging drums’. as it pushes music further away.
Where did Lichfield music share start?
It started with school visits, sing up funding and the Young Voices Choir. At first it only started off with a group of young children as they didn’t have enough funding to have a lot of different groups. Now due to the funding they have been given they now have a variety of different groups with one of them ranging up to aged 18 for young people.
Where are they now?
They spoke of how they’re lucky because of sing up to have a good relationship with the ‘Music Education Hub’. They range around different cities including Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. It has also enabled Cathy to now have a better relationship with the board and be able to make better decisions as she is now a big part of the board and it helps her to engage with more schools and have more projects.
Repertoire
They have become increasingly braver with their repertoire. The new commission was a real challenge, but feedback was excellent. Children that come to the cathedral attend Evensong and they always get helpful feedback about that.
Feedback
“Participation in Evensong was a special part of the experience. The staff and the children found this a spiritually moving experience.”
“This project is so important in both the musical and spiritual development of the children. I cannot express this enough.”
Jill – ‘Blackburn Cathedral School’
Problem- No financial investments from schools meant no investments in learning. They decided to change the program, so it will also be teacher centred. Which will give them more responsibility, so they enjoy it and it’s not just the children that are involved.
There is a need for good quality music education and a performance opportunity for quiet children and children that don’t choose to participate a lot or don’t get opportunities coming to them.
They’re also moving it from cathedrals to local town hall so that children from religious backgrounds will not miss out on the opportunity.
Sponsorship for program which showed the significance and how special the project was for the schools, community and people.
Additional Benefits
Linking of schools- social cohesion with common purpose.
Teacher confidence. Can perform own concerts and pieces which shows how involved they are and can get.
Wide range of different styles of concerts for every audience.
Why?
Self-confidence for children.
For the cathedral-
– Raise awareness for local cathedral
– Recruitments (Chorister)
– Contact with local businesses and colleagues
– Created community for them within schools and mutually easy access
For others-
– Young composers
– Trainee animateurs, accompanists, even management
– Income for local businesses, hire of hall and programme printing etc.
– Poets
– Links with schools and army
Funding-
Not reliant for it from anyone but schools.
Madison Eddleston was listening to Cathy Lamb “Teaching the world to sing” workshop at Sacred Space: Common Ground. The Association of English Cathedrals.
