Major Trophy

Hampshire

The Music Service underwent a major programme of expansion and re-structuring around three geographical areas, and, most significantly, Service staff now perform in both instrumental and curriculum roles and do so within and outwith Wider Opportunities’ settings. The perennial problem of summarising submissions of this high quality is deciding what to leave out.

We shall start with the Service’s own chosen example of a specific project which demonstrated the new direction and purpose of the Service and therefore fulfilled the Service’s policy and practice criteria of “Coherence, Inclusion and Learning for All”. “Step into the Picture” took place in March 2008 and was a major collaborative event for one area, centred on the growing relationship between the Music Service and the University of Winchester. It involved a partnership with the professional musicians of Southern Sinfonia, a notable composer, a community gospel choir, singers from local primary schools and the local area choir. The catalyst was an innovative composition with music based on a series of paintings by a local artist detailing the life of Christ. The musical response was through orchestral, vocal and improvisational elements: a multi-media performance involving the audience in dynamic and dramatic ways. Coherence was seen in the way that all aspects of the Service’s provision were brought together. Inclusion in the way that a special school provided dance material, and the age range of the performers was from seven years old right through to adult. Learning for all was seen in the innovative and groundbreaking nature of the production itself, the fact that all the participants were musical and artistic learners in the project.

And then there were some admirable features of the Wider Opportunities (known locally as “Listen2Me”) provision, such as over 6,000 pupils having experience of playing three different instruments (from a choice of eleven!) over the year; and the thoughtful ways in which Wider Opportunities were integrated within the primary school music curriculum, with the result that “Listen2Me” was not an added on extra but normal musical learning with a very clear emphasis on an instrument.

The Service’s three ways of working with professional musicians represented, for us, a model of good practice: first, as part of conference and course provision; secondly, as part of the world musics programme and thirdly, through specific projects which contributed to continuing programmes.

It has to be a given that to provide high quality music education, there has to be matching high quality INSET and CPD. There is that in abundance in Hampshire.

In 2004, we found the range and quality of provision in Hampshire to be quite superb. We still do!

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