South Gloucestershire Music Hub News June 2020 Welcome Well the world has changed since we last circulated our Hub newsletter! We hope you are personally keeping well and coping with the challenges of social distancing. Unbelievably, schools closing to most pupils seems to have made our lives even busier than before. It’s difficult to explain the reasons for this to those not involved in education, but at least we know we’re all in the same boat. No doubt you have just welcomed more children into school in term six and will be having more join you shortly. We’re very aware that this is a very challenging time and music activity may not be at the top of your ‘to sort’ list at the moment. However, we all need to have a really good think about how we move forward musically, support the children who have instrumental/vocal lessons and provide musical/creative experiences for whole classes. It’s been inspiring to see how much comfort and enjoyment has been created by the sharing of music during the past two months. If ever there was a time when the importance of music in all our lives was evident, it is now. Here at the hub, we’re determined to do what we can to ensure that the difficulties created by the requirements of social distancing do not create barriers for the next generation of musicians. We have some ideas, but we need to work through the practicalities with you, so please read on and importantly feedback to us your thoughts so we can shape things together, or the danger is thousands of young people will miss out musically. Before lockdown, preparations were already underway for a whole range of exciting musical opportunitites, which included our new ‘Let’s Rock’ holiday courses for complete beginners. Many of you had welcomed the Head of our Rock School, Pete Glover to your schools and he had been looking forward to visiting more of you and working with your young people. For secondary pupils we had started preparing our ‘Springtime on Broadway’ Easter Musical Theatre Course and plans were afoot to repeat the success of last year’s Summer school. We were also really disappointed to have to cancel the performances for our ‘Ignite festival’, in which many of your pupils were due to perform solos and ensemble pieces in a number of concerts and venues around our area. The concept of the Ignite Festival was a new one, only launched in 2019, and we are excited about developing it further in the coming years, but we’ll need our young people to continue to engage with their music lessons if we are to achieve this. However as some wise person once said ‘we are where we are’. So keeping a positive note, lets get onto business..!

Tuition in term six We envisage almost all instrumental/vocal tuition taking place online during Term six due to continuing social isolation challenges in schools. Please continue to prompt and encourage your pupils to sign up for these lessons at: www.integramusic.co.uk It’s vital children re-engage with music lessons as soon as possible, or their skills, enthusiasm and the holistic benefits will fall by the wayside; trying to get them back on board musically later in September will be a real challenge. If you do want some music lessons to take place physically in your school during term six, then please let us know if this of interest, as we may be able to provide them. However we will need to do a risk assessment with you in the first instance, to ensure this is undertaken safely for all parties. However, it’s now more important than ever that you please let pupils know about our online lessons – and to keep promoting that message. For some students the only way for them to hear about how to access these lessons will be through you and your school keeping them informed, so we hope you will keep supporting us with this. In the meantime we have given a great deal of thought and taken much advice on the safeguarding aspects of our online offer, to the extent we are confident our terms and conditions are amongst the strongest from a safeguarding perspective. Please share this information with your students We can now deliver video conference style 1-2-1 lessons over Microsoft Teams, which is a secure platform used by and approved by South Gloucestershire Council for such use. It’s free to download the Microsoft Teams software to a laptop, PC or tablet and students can use the system on any device without downloading anything. Using their browser they simply accept an invitation to a scheduled lesson and join in, so there should be no obstacle to anyone accessing this learning. Safeguarding for these lessons is secure and is agreed in advance with the families. Families pay the Music Hub directly for these online lessons. There are detailed terms and conditions that families will need to agree to before lessons can commence.

To book lessons families should go to www.integramusic.co.uk and click on the link at the end of the ‘Online lessons available now’ section. To help families during the period of school closures and lock down we are subsidising these lesson costs further than usual and absorbing the online booking provider’s fees, so this is not added onto the cost to families. Please note that we’re only able to do this for a limited time. Tuition from September We know you have an incredible amount to deal with at the moment as a unique Term six gets underway and you prepare for September. However, high-quality music making amongst young people is something we are proud of in South Gloucestershire, with many children benefitting not just from developing musical skills, but also the holistic outcomes that for many are absolutely vital to their wellbeing and personal development. We’ll very shortly be circulating the Instrumental/Vocal Tuition Booking Form for next year and you won’t be surprised to learn it introduces new flexible options for delivery. We urge you to ask your pupils to book lessons for next year as you normally would, but when completing the form, consider the delivery model that will enable your pupils to continue with their lessons or begin them. As well as considering the safety of pupils and your school teachers we also must be confident the peripatetic music teachers are not put at risk. Where lessons are 1-2- 1 and teaching spaces are very large for some schools, there will be little change to the current delivery model, except for teacher and pupil remaining physically distant and potentially the Hub providing clear screens between pupil and teacher. In other schools online streamed video lessons will be the only solution due to restrictions of space etc. There may well be some schools where it would work to have perhaps one music service teacher delivering lessons on the premises, while other lessons are delivered remotely. This could also mean the teacher present could devote some time to supporting those children having remote lessons with technology issues. Be assured, we want to work with you to enable your pupils to continue their lessons and support new pupils to begin their musical journeys. We will shortly distribute proposals for making music lessons in some form feasible, so if you have suggestions for how we can enable lessons to work in your school, or wish us to take other factors into account, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. It’s only by working together to plan and implement new ways of teaching music, that we’ll get through this with minimal impact upon our young people. Our relationship with North Somerset Music Service As you’re aware Mark Trego from North Somerset Music Service is leading the Hub this year, which has brought opportunities for each organisation to benefit from the other, with many more potential positive opportunities on the horizon. Because the arrangement has worked so well, we are now entering into a longer agreement between the two councils for this joint working arrangement to continue. So far, the only indication of the growing relationship within schools will have been some schools spotting that one or two instrumental teachers are wearing an ID badge from North Somerset. Enabling the teachers from both teams to drift across borders is really helping us meet the needs of schools and pupils more flexibly. As part of this new arrangement, Anne Clough who is currently Music CPD and Singing Strategy Manager in North Somerset, will relinquish her CPD hat and instead split her time equally between South Gloucestershire and North Somerset. This will result in a greater volume of the already high quality singing activity taking place in our schools and Anne is looking forward to leading us on a wonderful singing journey over the next twelve months. We are also planning joint authority events and combined, the number of advanced pupils will be large enough to launch new advanced ensembles and activities for our highest attaining young musicians. This is just the start of a exciting new era for both hubs and will benefit everyone! Please look out for news of these new opportunities in the coming months. New Hub Leader Mark’s tenure leading us through this year of transition, as mentioned above, ends in September, so he will be handing over to a new Joint Music Hub Leader at the end of this academic year. Mark has demonstrated the benefits of the joint role and is preparing us to be the flexible resilient organisation needed to meet the needs of our schools and young people in the future. We had a very intense day of interviews to select Mark’s successor and are confident we’ve made an excellent appointment with Simon Lock. Simon grew up in Somerset, studying the violin at Wells Cathedral School on a specialist music scholarship, before graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in 1995. He’s provided us with a little biography to give you a little insight into this background. After 15 years as a solo, chamber and orchestral violinist and peripatetic teacher Simon moved into full-time instrumental teaching in 2002. Initially this was in Croydon where he completed a PGCE, before moving on to the music service in Kent as a string teacher and middle manager. Since then he has led the music services for Slough, Buckinghamshire, Bedford and East Sussex. He has a Master’s in Business Administration and is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. Simon describes himself as motivated by inclusive, youth-driven education, ensuring music learning is embedded in every community. He’s committed to teacher development and organisational learning, ensuring the service is vibrant, innovative and fit for the future. Simon is looking forward to coming ‘back home’ to the West Country and meeting and working with you all. He will be visiting us on a number of occasions before he starts his role in September, so he can hit the ground running! Hopefully social distancing will be relaxed enough by then for him to actually meet some of the team! New singing opportunities in schools There has been a great tradition of quality singing events in South Gloucestershire, but now we want to enable many more young people to benefit from the joy of singing. From September there will be a host of new ways for your school and pupils to engage with singing. Please don’t worry - we are keeping all the things that you know and love, whilst refreshing and adding new things to the mix! Anne Clough, who is currently the Music CPD and Singing Strategy Manager in North Somerset, is going to be leading our revised provision next year and we’ve worked closely with her to develop this exciting strand of provision.The offer will be organised around geographical clusters of schools and below is a taste of the singing opportunities your soon to be released booking pack will contain! Y3/4 ‘Raise the Roof Festival’ – Autumn: Come together with neighbouring schools to ‘Raise The Roof’ with your amazing singing. There will be a teachers’ CPD twilight session to learn the songs in term one and a support visit to work with the children. However, due to the current pandemic, this autumn the event will be a virtual one. Instead of visiting nearby schools on the festival date, Anne will lead the festival from a single host school, with others joining in via Microsoft Teams. We’re sure all the children will enjoy the novelty of a different approach!

Primary schools’ carol service - Friday 4th December 2020: Come and join us for our wonderful traditional carol service, held in the beautiful Clifton Cathedral for KS2 children. Traditional and modern carols will be sung, there will be a traditional nativity tableau, as well as an opportunity for your school to perform a Christmas carol on your own. Of course, there will also still be a visit from our guest donkey! Please don’t let social distancing concerns put you off signing up for this marvellous event. There is more than enough room in the cathedral to separate schools by moving seating and by using the multiple entrances that the cathedral has, it will be one of the few events in the autumn where it will be safe to have a large number of people together.

Secondary School and Senior Ensemble Centre Christmas Concert – December: Building on the success of last year’s event, we want to create more space around this event to allow more support with preparation, more rehearsal time and to get more young people involved. To enable this, we are moving the overall event away from Clifton Cathedral and it will take place on a different day. More information will follow when we have overcome the social distancing challenges that we are working to address.

Y5/6 Sing 2gether! – Spring 2021: These festivals will take place in geographic clusters bringing children from multiple schools together. The events will be preceded by a staff CPD seminar and school support visits from hub teachers and of course your teachers, will help the children learn the songs. Ideally we hope that our secondary schools will consider hosting these so there is a transitional element. If any secondary Heads of Music would be interested in doing so, then please email [email protected] to register your interest. Anne will have a South. Gloucestershire Council email address when she formally joins us in September. It would be great if pupils of the secondary schools could get also get involved - perhaps accompanying the songs? Showstoppers Music Theatre Course – Easter holiday: We are planning to once again run this amazing three day course culminating in a performance. Aimed at KS3+ pupils, this will be a great opportunity for singers, dancers and musicians that want to explore the music of the great shows to do so under expert tutelage.

Y2 ‘Summer Sing’ – Summer 2021: Schools come together to share, have fun and celebrate a selection of themed songs with their neighbouring schools in term six. There will be a teachers’ CPD twilight session to learn the songs in term four.

KS2 Choirs Festival – Summer 2021: This is an event just for school choirs, as opposed to all children, so it’s all about developing our singing ensembles. Following school support visits, choirs come together from across South Gloucestershire for a single gala performance, where they all perform to each other and an audience, but also combine for some wonderful massed vocal items.

Let’s Sing! Our primary vocal programme continues to be available in any term throughout the year. This is a fabulous five week singing programme for schools and is offered to any class or year group. It’s full of fun songs and musical warm ups which teachers can use themselves and which will further develop their singing delivery.

Other new opportunities for schools New in 2019-20 was our Primary Teachers Network, but sadly the coronavirus has prevented us building up the momentum of this group. You’ll find six dates across the year when you receive your booking pack from the hub. The more teachers that sign up to this, the more effective it will be - and it’s free! With a brand new hub leader in post, this forum provides a great opportunity for you to get to influence how things evolve.

Also free next year will be the Secondary Teachers Network. Again, this will include six dates across the year and as mentioned above, will give a wonderful opportunity to not just share best practice and receive CPD from guest facilitators, but also to influence the evolution of the hub.

New culturally unique music workshops will be available from September. These will offer schools the opportunity to book half, or whole day workshops on music from cultures that will tie into wider learning. We hope to be able to offer workshops from African, Indian, Indonesian, Caribbean and South American traditions next year, using instruments such as gamelan and steel pans that belong to North Somerset Music Service, which will supplement our own resources.

BBC ‘Ten Pieces at Home’ If you are looking for musical activities for your pupils to engage with at home visit the BBC ‘Ten Pieces at Home’ page, where you will find weekly activities for primary schools, home educators and parents to share with their students. Each includes a film to watch and enjoy, and a linked creative activity that can be completed by children at home without any special materials or preparation! A perfect, simple and easy way to keep listening, enjoying and creating music at this time.

There are five weeks of activities currently on the site. Click here to have a look. Please talk to us Just like you we are grappling with how to adapt and overcome future challenges at this difficult time. Please feel free to talk to us and share your ideas, concerns, problems and suggested solutions, so together we can all better support our students more effectively.