The five regional winners are: Withernsea Junior School in Kingston upon Hull, Coppice Primary School in Derby, Cwm Glas Primary School in Swansea, Rowdown Primary School in Croydon and Crowhurst CofE Primary School in Hastings. Each receives £1,000 worth of Yamaha instruments.

The copmetition was open to all schools that took part in our MusicQuest project earlier this year, and invited their pupils to compose a short piece of classical music in response to a piece of music they heardas part of the project. The winning entry was a response to the Shrovetide Fair by Stravinsky.

Children & the Arts would like to congratulate all the winners and thank everyone who took part.

With a full British cast and crew, this is set to be the premiere of the year and has already received outstanding reviews from its special screening out of competition at the Cannes festival. All of the cast are expected to attend the premiere, including Gemma Arterton and Dominic Cooper.

For your chance to walk down the red (or in this case green) carpet at the Odeon, Leicester Square please reserve tickets now by emailing events@childrenandarts.org.uk with your name, address, telephone number, email and the number of tickets you would like to reserve. Tickets are limited and will cost £50, £70 or £100.

The deadline for signing up is Monday 23 August 2010 and we will notify you within 48 hours of this date to let you know if you have been successful.

All proceeds will support Children & the Arts’ work across the UK in 2011/12, taking sustainable high quality arts projects to school children who would otherwise not have the opportunity.

Read more about the film here.
TAMARA DREWE is released in cinemas nationwide on 10th September 2010.

Please note: these tickets are not to be re-sold to any third party without Children & the Arts’ permission. Children & the Arts’ will not share your personal information with other people or businesses.

On 7th July, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall attended the opening of the PoetryQuest Festival in Kensington Gardens. The Festival was organised by Children & the Arts, and supported by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. It was the culmination of a nine-month poetry and visual art project, PoetryQuest, which was supported by Van Cleef & Arpels and the Foyle Foundation.

The Duchess read an extract from one of her favourite childhood poems, Matilda by Hilaire Belloc, and was followed on stage by Children & the Arts Ambassador Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti. Also on stage was 10-year-old Macaulay Morgan from Gaellifaelog Primary, Merthyr Tydfil, who read a poem created as part of his work on the PoetryQuest project.

Speaking about the Festival, Jonathan Moulds, president, Europe, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said: “We are delighted to support the Children & the Arts PoetryQuest Festival. It’s a wonderful demonstration of the inspirational power of the arts that enables the children involved to come together to share and celebrate their experiences and creative work.”

PoetryQuest is a new project for Children & the Arts and since September 2009 has linked four Arts Centres around the country with 16 primary schools, introducing almost 1000 children aged between 9-11 to a local arts venue and epic poetry. The PoetryQuest Festival brought together the schools involved in PoetryQuest to celebrate their work.

With many thanks to The Royal Parks for all their support for the festival in Kensington Gardens.

For more information about PoetryQuest, visit the project page.

The event forms an integral part of Business in the Community’s Give and Gain Day 2010 and features a massed choir from companies in the City of London and Canary Wharf together with children from Hackney Schools joining Harvey Brough and his band with soloists Clara Sanabras, Caitriona O’Leary, Mike Outram, James Pearson, Andy Hamill and Roy Dodds.

Building on the success of “The City Sings”, organiser Clare Delmar has brought together singers from City firms, including UBS, KPMG and Rouse Legal, to support music education in schools and communities.

‘Requiem in Blue’ was written in 1998 as a highly personal response to the untimely death several years earlier of Brough’s older brother, Lester.  It was commissioned by East England Arts and premiered that same year.   It has since enjoyed over 30 public performances.  ‘Requiem in Blue’ is based on the traditional Latin mass and incorporates folksong, blues, jazz, gospel and improvised elements. The final movement, ‘Lux Aeterna’, features words from the inspirational play ‘Spoonface Steinberg’, written by Lee Hall.  The work is scored for small ensemble (percussion, bass, keyboards, chamber organ, theorbo, Celtic harp & flugelhorn) with 3 vocal soloists, SATB choir and children’s choir.

Hailed as one of the UK’s most accomplished and diverse musicians, Harvey Brough’s career has covered an extraordinary range of musical styles including early music, classical, pop, soul and jazz. Brough founded the famous 1980s pop group ‘Harvey and the Wallbangers’.  He started his musical life aged 6 as a choirboy at Coventry Cathedral. Then, aged 17, he studied oboe with Lady Barbirolli at the Royal Academy of Music followed by a scholarship to Clare College Cambridge. For the past thirty years, Brough has worked professionally in music as a performer, arranger, conductor, producer and composer, moving easily between the worlds of theatre, film, TV and radio.

The CD ‘Requiem in Blue’ is available from 21st June 2010 at all good record stores on Smudged Discs, catalogue number SMU 603.

Tickets for the performance are £10 (£5 concessions) and will be available on the door or can be reserved by emailing requiemlaunch@gmail.com.

The PoetryQuest Festival is a celebration to mark the culmination of a nationwide project which has introduced children from four areas across the UK to the magical world of visual art & epic poetry.  At the festival your children will have the opportunity to create their own poems and artwork through workshops with professional poets and visual artists and see the work created by the children involved in the year long project.  The exhibition your children will see will be of 32 small tipis decorated by the classes involved with poems and artwork reflecting their area project.  This exhibition runs from the 7th - 9th July in Kensington Gardens, London and will also be open to the public on the 7th & 8th July 5.00pm-8.00pm.

This will be an exciting, creative festival of poetry which we would love your school to be involved in.  Take a look at our Schools Pack for details of the festival and how to get involved.  Places are limited so please return the RSVP form as soon as possible.

If you have any queries or would like to discuss this opportunity further please call 020 3326 2230 or email us.

The project has been a resounding success and you can see the results yourself on our youtube channel. You can also hear a podcast with interviews from some of the participants as they give their reactions to a performance of A Christmas Carol that they saw in December.

To read more about our Start programme visit our Start pages.

Since the start of this academic year PoetryQuest has linked galleries across the UK with nearly 1000 primary school children and started them on the journey of exploring epic poetry.  As part of this the children were given the chance to decorate their own class poetry tipis. These tipis are artworks in themselves and also double as magical performance spaces.  The festival celebrates the children’s work created during this time around a festival of poetry, performance, tipis and artwork. 

Volunteer Roles
Children & the Arts are looking for eager volunteers to assist us from the 6th to 9th July and make the event one that the children involved will never forget. We will need assistance in everything from setting up, providing information to the public, assisting workshop leaders and helping keep the children safe; to erecting the 32 tipis in the middle of our festival site. There will be a wide range of things to do with the site staffed from 8am until 8pm.  The days are divided into shifts and if possible it would be great if you could volunteer for a shift (or more!) to help make the organisation of the days easier but any time you give would be greatly appreciated.

We are unable to offer payment for this work but will be able to provide food during the day and cover any reasonable transport costs. 

All volunteers must be CRB checked.  This will be arranged by Children & the Arts.

Deadline for applications: 24th May 2010

For more detials and to apply please download our information pack or contact Tom MacAndrew

“Thank you for inviting us to the ballet. It was wonderful and excellent and beautiful and colourful and magnificent!” Pupil, Benedict School

We couldn’t have achieved this without you so a  BIG thank you from all of us for your support!

Next year we would like to reach even more disadvantaged children from across the UK. If you’d like to lend us your support please visit our how you can help page or make a donation.