Children & the Arts

The Partners

Wickham Primary School is a small school in a rural setting 11 miles outside of Southampton.  It draws its pupils from the local village and has a high proportion of children with learning difficulties and disabilities.  It has been taking part in the Children and the Arts project with Turner Sims Concert Hall for the last two years.  

The Project

How many children get the chance to have a world class musician in their classroom? Not many, but to the pupils at Wickham Primary School in Hampshire it has become a regular occurrence.  They have been taking part in the Children and the Arts project with Turner Sims Concert Hall and over the last couple of years they have shared their hall and sometimes their school dinners with the London Mozart Players, a multi awarding winning jazz trumpeter and one of the finest tabla players in the world.   T

he Children and the Arts Start project with the Turner Sims Concert Hall has involved the pupils in workshops and concerts in four music forms; world, classical, folk and jazz.  Wickham have been particularly lucky in that as well as having all the workshops in their classrooms, two of the concerts have taken place in their very own school hall. 

  “I like it because they let us have a go” – Pupil, Year 6

The enthusiasm with which the pupils welcomed Abram Wilson – award winning jazz trumpeter into assembly was striking as was the speed and ease with which they joined in with his workshop.  In no time at all they were telling the difference between light and dark tones, identifying melodic improvisations of Happy Birthday and performing scat in front of their school mates.    

Abram Wilson’s visit was the culmination of the Start project in the school.  His day there clearly demonstrated the impact that the project has had on the children’s understanding and enjoyment of music.  They listened intently to his playing in assembly, joined enthusiastically in his workshops and needed no prompting to ask questions and offer up information when he visited them all in class.    

“One of the most powerful things is that often it is the children who have particular issues or who find behaviour quite difficult who really link in with the music activities.  It is lovely to see them singing and playing and really enjoying themselves and totally absorbed in what they are doing.” Head Teacher

 The connection created by having the artists right there, just for them, means that the children have picked up on the passion that the musicians have for their music and their instruments.  Lots of them have commented about wanting to play music and to learn instruments and they are always excited when the next visit or trip is announced. 

“We’ve really enjoyed taking part and it has been wonderful to see the impact the project has had on the children.  It’s really so important for them, a project like this can change a child’s attitude towards a subject like music and create aspirations that just listening to music doesn’t create.” Head Teacher