#EveryChildAMusician
The passion for music, composition, and singing was fully apparent at a music conference held yesterday in Chichester for teachers working in the primary and SEND areas of education.
West Sussex Music organised and ran the Primary & SEND Music Education Conference at Chichester College on Wednesday 10 July. Aimed at teachers working in KS1, KS2 and SEND, it was free to attend and included a wide variety of workshops to learn new techniques in.
Back by popular demand was the always inspiring Jimmy Rotheram. Jimmy taught strategies for empowering children with therapeutic approaches to composition in one workshop, and later in the day taught conference goers how to find the music in anything! His creative genius showed there are accessible and alternative ways to make meaningful music.
Jane Swindells, the Primary Curriculum Manager for West Sussex Music, who organised the conference said: “We’re proud of the breadth of workshops we offered at this conference, and it was heartening to see so many teachers making such good use of them. Everywhere you looked groups were learning new skills or refreshing others, with our incredible workshop leaders who really inspired everyone.”
Singing Lead for West Sussex Music, Rachel Maby, ran a workshop on ‘the power and awe of the human voice’, where participants learned vocal exercises and breathing exercises to safely develop vocal range and projection.
The incredible Andrew Ferguson who runs Education & Bass ran three workshops which featured BandLab Edu, a free online platform designed for educators seeking to expand their digital toolkit. He taught participants how to use the platform, then in further workshops how to encourage students to create music that’s reflective of their communities and cultures and lastly, how to create music for moving imagery, such as games.
Emily Barden rounded off the workshop offer with the opportunity to compose rounds. In this practical music-filled session, Emily led workshop goers through the process of deconstructing rounds, making and creating their own rounds, and then exploring ways to build upon these to create bigger, accompanied pieces of music.
The conference takes place annually. Details of next year’s will be announced soon, sign up to the Hub newsletter here to find out more.
