Education ViVA

Five! Six! Seven! Eight!
11-15th September 2006
South Holland Centre, Spalding

Gedney Hill Primary School - George Farmer Technology College - Gleed Boys School - Gleed Girls Technology College - Moulton Chapel Primary School - SouthView Primary School - St Paul's Community Primary School - St John Baptist Primary School

A new three-year programme of events, 'Five! Six! Seven! Eight!' launched with a series of wind quintet workshops in eight schools in South Holland, Lincolnshire.

The programme, which has been designed in partnership with South Holland District Council, South Holland Centre, Eastern Orchestral Board, teachers from the participating schools and ViVA, will include recitals at schools and community centres, pupils creating new pieces to perform alongside ViVA, a family music day and the opportunity for some students to plan and manage their own ViVA concert.

The ViVA wind quintet visited all the schools and introduced themselves and their instruments to over 600 students. The musicians particularly highlighted the oboe, bassoon and horn as three of the more endangered instruments and showed many of the participants how to play a straw to help them understand how the different wind instruments work! Following the visit each school was given a work pack containing ideas for cross-curricular work to complement the workshop.

During the workshops the musicians played a variety of repertoire, some of which was linked to the ViVA launch concert at the South Holland Centre for 'Five! Six! Seven! Eight!' to encourage the students to attend the concert. All the participating schools were given a reduced price ticket offer for the concert and the wind quintet gave a pre-concert talk especially for the students they had met during their tour.

"This is a really exciting project and a unique opportunity to be able to see the development of individual students over a 3 year period. It was wonderful to see the reactions of youngsters to instruments 'in the flesh' that they have previously only been able to access pictures and/or recordings of. Furthermore, the musicians made the workshop a wholly interesting and humorous experience."
- Ian Tait, Head of Music at Gleed Girls Technology College

In spring 2007 the wind quintet will visit South Holland again to work alongside students attending the county music service. Three of the musicians involved in these visits will form a wind trio and return to all the schools for another visit in June 2007.

Images from the project...