Things to do with family at The Firs
Spend time surrounded by musical inspiration in the pretty cottage and garden at The Firs and make music with instruments in the sound garden.
Elgar Soundscapes: Creating Musical Journeys through Nature.
Discover a musical family experience in the garden at The Firs to find the 5 ingredients needed to build musical compositions.
A composer’s job is to create musical recipes using sounds, which the orchestra performers can follow to recreate compositions.
Elgar Soundscapes is an interactive activity inspired by our Curating Elgar project, developed with over 200 participants to respond to Elgar’s story, music and connection to landscape and nature. Visit The First to have a go at creating your own musical journeys by exploring sounds within the garden and try it out in your own green spaces.
Sound Garden
Choose between the three large instruments that wind around the pagoda, surrounded by trees and beautiful plants. There’s the vertical xylophone, hammock xylophone and a metallic swirl to create all sorts of tunes.
We have the instruments just add your imagination. You might even have an Elgar in the making?
Using our specially crafted music makers (also known as golf balls on sticks) create your own tune and share it on our social media use #soundgarden.
Cottage garden
After making music there is lots of exploring to be done in the woodland areas and pretty cottage garden, with bug hotels to discover and an opportunity sit next to a life size statue of Elgar himself on one of our garden benches.