In 2023, we performed in five secondary schools and one SEN school across North Lincolnshire as part of our First Time Jazz programme, designed to engage young people who may not have seen any live music since before the pandemic or had limited previous access to music provision. You can read more about our First Time Jazz tour of North Lincs here.
Following the success of this tour, we returned to four of the schools in February and March 2024. Over the course of four weeks, the young people worked with either NYJO Educator Fergus Quill or NYJO Emerging Professional Miles Pillinger to develop a samba-inspired project that culminated in a final performance at The Plowright, a local theatre in Scunthorpe.
We were delighted by the opportunity to work with these schools from the tour; continuing to develop the connections we made the year before, further expanding their skills and love for music, and ultimately providing these young people with opportunities they may not have had access to otherwise.
Throughout the four weeks, Fergus and Miles planned a joint project, where they each delivered a strand in different schools throughout the four weeks and mapped out how the performance would come together from their separate strands of teaching. Each week they would both focus on different techniques such as improvisation, rhythm, and listening to samba inspired music to give the young people a reference for the music that they were making. Fergus worked with one school’s existing orchestra whilst Miles honed in on working with across three schools with less experienced instrumentalists through samba, percussion and vocal elements.
The focus of this project was for the young people to ultimately have fun and to spark their love for music-making that resulted in a performance that felt rewarding to them. This project was also able to help develop our Emerging Professional Miles’ educator skills as he prepared the young people to participate in their final performance.
Reflecting on the mentoring and training Miles had with Kim Perkins, who founded Music Making SENse, and Sandra Dryer, an experienced percussion leader, Miles was interested in the subversion of how people may perceive young people in SEN schools: ‘Kim was really thorough in preparing me for what was going to happen at the SEN school […] I feel like there is this stigma around SEN work where people treat young people with SEN like they’re younger than they actually are, but the young people had really great musical ability. There was one young person that was just amazing at samba and was doing all these crazy rhythms that he had learnt at his old school!’
On the day of the show, students from the schools came together to perform the three samba tunes they had been rehearsing; sharing the stage with their peers, new friends from the other schools, and also having the chance to see a NYJO quartet perform beforehand; the energy in the theatre was amazing, as the young people showcased their hard work, passion, and newfound appreciation for making music together.
“I most enjoyed being able to learn a new music style and sharing the experience with my class and other schools. There’s lots of different instruments I didn’t know about before but discovered through this project.” – Logan, project participant
Our thanks go to the Kirby Laing Foundation for supporting our Widening Access programme over the last 3 years, and all of our individual supporters for helping us keep growing and reaching more young people across England and Wales. Please consider becoming a NYJO Friend with a regular donation if you are in a position to do so!