Curating Elgar at The Firs

17 June 2019

Workshop at Calthorpe Academy

We arrived at school bright and early with a car packed full of sensory resources ready for our three workshops with eighteen of Calthorpe Academy’s pupils with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties, some of the most disabled in the school. 

Our grass matting, animal finger puppets, trays of soil, stones and leaves, combined with video projections of the Malvern Hills transported us to Elgar’s world. Each class took a musical journey exploring the sounds of nature using drums, rain sticks and their voices to create improvised soundscapes.  

Whilst the children were all non-verbal, it was clear that they were enjoying themselves. Staff commented that it is rare for everyone to stay in the room for an activity session. However, the music captured their attention and with the help of support staff, all the children were involved with the musical activities.  

The highlight of the day was when one non-verbal student found his singing voice during the session. Initially, everyone thought it was me singing, but he was perfectly copying my tone and we ended up improvising a duet together. 

12 July 2019

Workshop with Kimichi School

We knew we were going to have a wonderful day with the Kimichi students as we approached the beautiful old school building on Yardley Road. The school’s unique music-centric approach transforms the educational experiences of pupils who previously experienced disrupted periods of education. 

We started the day on the veranda with an Elgar Quiz and the pupils were eager to demonstrate their knowledge of this local musical icon, having already studied him quite extensively as part of the BBC’s Ten Pieces initiative. To make it a little trickier for them, we had a round where they had to guess English herbs and flowers from Elgar’s garden through their senses of smell and taste. We then spent some time playing improvisation games inspired by Elgar’s story to set the scene for our afternoon session. 

As soon as they had finished lunch, students quickly organised themselves into small groups consisting of a rock band, a percussion group and mixed classical ensemble. Each group were tasked with composing music which conveyed the character of each of their friends, culminating in a final performance of what we called the Kimichi Enigma Variations. 

15 July 2019

Workshop with Grove Primary School

As I wheeled a small pink bike towards the Grove Primary School gates, I had not anticipated quite the power it had to inspire. 

During the day, we led music sessions across the whole school, from nursery up to Key Stage 2, with a variety of activities ranging from finger puppet dancing to conducting games. 

We started each session with live performances of Elgar’s music on the violin and flute, as many of the children hadn’t ever had the opportunity to see classical instruments up close. This experience was captivating for them, and many took the opportunity to try the instruments out themselves. We then formed a percussion orchestra, and some brave volunteers had the opportunity to conduct and create their own accompaniment to Elgar’s ‘Humoreske’, the tune he wrote when he was at primary school. 

The sessions culminated in the creation of Tymek’s bicycle drum kit, inspired by Elgar’s love of cycling. This was the highlight of each session. This modest bike sparked the imagination of a hundred wannabe heavy metal drummers. Whilst only a few had the chance to play the bike themselves, everyone left the session wondering whether their parents had any chopsticks so they could play their own bike when they got home. 

13 August 2019

Workshop with Probation Services

Branded the ugliest building in Worcester, Elgar House seemed on face value to be the least suitable place to run a workshop to inspire people with Elgar’s music and the landscape. However, looks can be deceiving. 

We started one of our most successful sessions at Worcester Probation Service with five very tentative service users bemused about why Elgar had any relevance to their lives. Until now, he had merely been the imposing bronze statue of a man in academic robes on the High Street.  

Chivvied along by their probation officers, we started a quiz which focused on Elgar’s life in Worcester. Quickly, the group became fascinated by the early photographs depicting Elgar’s life, realising many of the places still existed and enjoyed guessing which shop could have been the Elgar family’s music shop. Elgar quickly became a relatable person and everyone felt a real pride that a local boy could rise to such success. 

We then taught them some samba drumming to demonstrate some of the sounds Elgar might have heard during the trip he made to the Amazon in his later life. Most of the group had no experience of making music themselves and were thrilled find that they could hold a beat and play together in an ensemble. 

14 August 2019

Workshop with Green Fingers Project

A dozen children and their families made their way into the Carice Room at The Firs and were greeted by an array of instruments and puppets. 

Together we told the story of Elgar’s childhood with the help of photographs, videos and live music. 

We then used our imaginations to create musical soundscapes based on his life. Everyone was keen to take part, having a go on the violin or flute before we moved on to playing the bicycle drum kit. 

At the end of the workshop, we made a tour of Elgar’s birthplace to imagine what it would have been like to live in the countryside in the old days. 

As we moved between rooms, we saw Elgar’s childhood drum, some of his wood carving and tried our hands at chess. People were particularly fascinated by the Aeolian harp. Experiencing the museum together brought us all even closer to Elgar and his music. 

15 August 2019

Workshop with European Youth Refugee Choir

As the European Youth Refugee Choir arrived at The Firs, this was their first time in the Worcestershire countryside. This group of young men knew nothing about Elgar and were keen to find out as we played an Elgar quiz.  

During the quiz they had discovered that Elgar had visited South America after his wife’s death. So, we decided to learn some Brazilian samba together, splitting into teams of drummers, clave, maraca and agogo players. We also created our own interpretation of Elgar’s ‘We are the Music Makers’ led by the nine-year-old son of one of the participants which he was thrilled to lead. 

At the end of the session, we processed through the grounds performing samba rhythms to the visitors and stopped at the Elgar statue for our improvised performance of ‘We are the Music Makers’ before everyone took a selfie with the Elgar statue on the garden bench. 

2 September 2019

Workshop with School of Theatre Excellence

We were some of the first visitors to the School of Theatre Excellence’s brand new premises in the Jewellery Quarter. Fourteen newly enrolled musical theatre pupils were ready to learn about the composer Elgar after their morning dance class. 

Whilst Elgar’s name was familiar, nobody was aware they had listened to any of his music before. Through an introductory quiz, they learned about Elgar’s life and began realising that they had come across his music through the soundtrack of the film ‘The Matrix’ and from the ‘Last Night of the Proms’.  We then got everyone on their feet to learn the dance choreography for Elgar’s Quadrilles – dance music he wrote for the patients at Powick Psychiatric Hospital. 

After learning the core Victorian dance steps, we led a game of ‘Cotillion Charades’. Working in pairs, students devised a dance choreography demonstrating one of Elgar’s hobbies including chemistry, fishing, golf and woodwork. Each pair performed their dance to the group for everyone to guess the hobby. The hilarity of the activity blew the cobwebs off this forgotten dance form and everyone enjoyed skipping around the room imagining they were at an Edwardian Ball. 

2 November 2019

Workshop with Junior Conservatoire

The seven advanced Junior Conservatoire students already knew a lot about Elgar. They enjoyed listening to his music and discussing how his composition characterises Falstaff, Cockaigne and Polonia. 

Everyone was surprised to learn that Elgar had not studied at a conservatoire and that one of his first musical jobs was as bandmaster for an asylum. 

This provided the opportunity to discuss how many musicians have portfolio careers, working on a variety of community projects between performances just like Elgar did in his early career. 

In the afternoon, we split the musicians into two groups and gave them the task of creating a 15-minute interactive workshop which told Elgar’s story through musical games suited to Key Stage 1. 

This was a completely new experience for them, and it was wonderful to see all the students so engaged in the task. Everyone was pushed out of their comfort zone to explore new skills of presenting, conducting, improvising and composing, which are not normally the focus of their day-to-day music education. 

By the end of the session even the shyest members of the group felt confident working in this way, and everyone had a lot of fun watching and participating in each other’s workshops.

20 November 2019

Workshop with St Alphege Church Girl's Choir

The 12 choristers, ranging from primary school up to sixth form college, have become a close-knit group of friends whose enthusiasm for music is infectious. 

We started their session with a vocal warm-up where we all created our own ‘musical enigmas’ to represent our names, before devising our own choral arrangement of ‘We are the Music Makers’. These activities enabled the girls to experience composing and arranging music themselves, a contrast from their usual role performing pre-existing music. 

After discussing Elgar’s story, looking at photographs and listening to some of his orchestral music, the girls split into three groups to play musical charades. Each group was given a photograph of Elgar pursuing one of his hobbies and their task was to compose a soundscape depicting the activity using percussion instruments, their voices and mime.  

The girls thrived on working together to create their music tableaux, busy trying out sounds on the different instruments and fitting them into an entertaining narrative. At the end of the session, the groups took turns performing their pieces while the rest of the group guessed the hobby.

29 November 2019

Workshop with The Firs team

The final part of the project was to spend a day at The Firs, training property staff and volunteers to lead a new music education and outreach programme for younger visitors to the site. The focus of the sessions was to encourage everyone to look at the property through the eyes of children and spot the opportunities for young families to learn about Elgar through musical play and storytelling. 

I worked with Kirsty, Visitor Experience Manager and Joe, House Steward & Volunteering Co-ordinator to play a variety of musical games based on call and response. Joe and Kirsty then had the opportunity to lead the creation of musical soundscapes and mimes telling the story of Elgar. We spent time moving around the property to identify spaces with opportunities to create music.  

Tymek demonstrated how you can use everyday objects to create music, such as our bicycle drum kit. I shared examples of resources used to create sensory stories with younger and SEND audiences and then Joe and Kirsty performed their soundscapes and mimes, as examples of how simple interactive activities can be very effective. 

Small groups of volunteers were each given a photo from the museum, showing Elgar pursuing one of his hobbies. They were given 10 minutes to create a small performance where the rest of the group could guess the activity. Everyone immediately got into the spirit of the game and created wonderful musical charades. 

The success of this activity was one of the highlights of the entire project for me. Here, we had a group of adults experiencing the same enjoyment that the primary school children at St Alphege Choir had enjoyed just the week before. Everyone was engaged and working together to create performances which explored their creativity by experimenting with new ideas, simultaneously allowing them to take risks and have fun. For me, this is exactly what music making should be about, whether you are a child or an adult, a beginner or a professional. 

The enthusiasm of the staff and volunteers at The Firs was wonderful and I am excited to see how they use these new approaches to musical outreach over the coming years.