Toddling around the East End

In a change to my traditional morning commute, on Wednesday last week I found myself heading deep into London’s East End to visit the Altmore Children’s Centre in Newham for the penultimate performance of our Musical Rumpus: A Fairy Queen in the Forest tour. As a member of the Development team, it is both inspiring and rewarding to see the outcomes of projects we fundraise for. In Musical Rumpus, babies, toddlers and their parents enter an immersive music-theatre experience – a re-imagining of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen creating a multi-sensory world of music, sights, sounds and textures for 0-3-year-olds to explore.

Musical Rumpus on tour.
Image: Laura Fensom.

As the performance got underway, I was intrigued by how engaged both the children and their parents were. A toddler who had been crying as she arrived at the centre was now sporting an expression of curiosity and delight, while a number of the children were on their feet, exploring the performance space and interacting with the singers. Others remained on the perimeter, happy to experience the performance in the laps of their parents – many of whom seemed equally enthralled and generally delighted to be sharing the experience so closely with their child.

I was proud to be part of an organisation that had brought live classical music and opera to over 350 children and as many adults over the course of the Musical Rumpus tour. For many it was their first experience of classical music and opera, and from a fundraising point of view it made me even more determined to reach our target so that our next tour can go ahead in 2013. To make this happen, we are taking part in The Big Give Christmas Challenge – a 3-day online fundraising campaign, kicking off this Thursday. Every penny will help, so if you are able to, please support our campaign to bring another magical experience to 350 more babies and toddlers. You can find out more about the project and how your donation could be doubled on our website.

To donate to our Big Give Christmas Challenge visit The Big Give website at 10.00am on Thursday 6^th, Friday 7^th and Saturday 8^th December. Take a look at our Musical Rumpus tour video.

The arts – a marginal activity? Not in our experience.

I began yesterday with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme as I got ready for the day ahead (along with 7 million others). At 8.00am a piece on the arts was promised in the coming hour – I noticed this particularly because it’s the field I’m involved in on a daily basis and because I feel strongly about the importance of the arts and their value both in our collective lives and for us individually. When it came along at 8.20am the feature painted a picture which is quite different from my day-to-day experience and indeed from my sense of what’s going on generally in this field. It noted elitism, particularly in opera and ballet, and questioned whether subsidy of the arts serves the population as a whole. The suggestion was that the arts primarily serve a small privileged section of the population and reaching out to new audiences and participants is marginal and to no great effect.

Two hours later I was in Dagenham at Valence Library being greeted by the extremely cheery and helpful library staff along with around 100 parents and toddlers. We were there for a performance of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, as adapted for 0–3-year-olds and their parents. The performance was part of a 12-venue tour across Barking & Dagenham and Newham in libraries, children’s and community centres. The library had been transformed into a forest and six musicians, including two from the Orchestra of the Age Enlightenment’s young musicians’ programme and two from The Sixteen’s young singers’ programme, gave us a magical 45 minute show about fairies, trees, love and adventure. It was utterly enchanting and of the highest quality. 100 people – all of whom (I think) would be classed by the Today programme’s report as ‘not attending’ – had encountered Henry Purcell for the first time as performed by some of the UK’s most promising young musicians.

Musical Rumpus: A Fairy Queen in the Forest on tour in Barking & Dagenham.
Image: Laura Fensom.

Reaching an audience like this doesn’t just happen, but at the same time there’s nothing mystical about it.  The event was free, it was on their doorstep and it was in a trusted location. We told people about it and made it really easy to get a ticket and know what to expect.

My experience in Dagenham made me recall the Today piece and think about why it had got things so utterly wrong. The Fairy Queen project is not a one-off for Spitalfields Music – it’s just one of a whole range of things we do all of which are about offering music to as many people as possible in East London. And I know we are not alone in our outlook and indeed in our success at reaching new audiences on a daily basis. Quite the contrary.

Musical Rumpus: A Fairy Queen in the Forest at Rich Mix during
Spitalfields Music Summer Festival 2012.
Image: James Berry.

So why did the radio piece get things wrong? It’s probably easy to reach for some stereotypes and I suppose things going wrong is much more a story than things going right. And of course, the truth is that there is so much more which could be done.  The arts sector is tiny in relation to its potential – there will always be more to do, simply because the scale of the potential is vast. And there will always be examples of bad practice. But if asked to characterise the sector I work in, I’d say that effort to spend subsidy wisely and to the benefit of as many people as possible is everywhere. It’s certainly not a marginal activity. I’m pretty certain that the roughly 500 people in Barking & Dagenham who saw The Fairy Queen this week would not think so.

And at the end of the day it’s their view that I’m interested in.

Abigail Pogson
Chief Executive

Intern Diaries: Bethan

I can hardly believe it has been almost three months since I joined the team as Marketing and Box Office Intern. It feels like yesterday I was walking into the office a bit nervous and wobbly-kneed to have my office induction with Office Manager Helen. Now I feel like a fully-fledged member of the team! With all the Summer Festival action over for another year and the office in reflecting mood after evaluating all the festival activity, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on what I’ve been up to, and share a few random highlights…

Now that I try to write up everything I have done during my time as intern I realise I have actually been up to rather a lot! Writing copy for e-bulletins, designing programme books and e-flyers, working on reciprocal marketing relationships, distributing publicity, liaising with press and securing listings (in national papers!), updating the website and one of my favourite tasks, ordering 500 florescent Spitalfields Music branded balloons. A couple of these incidentally managed to cross the channel and end up on a beach in Holland!

Rather excitingly in the past week I have seen the brochure for the upcoming Winter Festival begin to take shape.  I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more though (other than it looks great of course) – you’ll have to wait and see!

The proximity of my desk to the biscuit supply is probably a good reason as to why many of my non-musical highlights of the internship are edible ones! I’m thinking in particular of fellow intern Alex’s moreish ‘blondies’ or cinnamon brownies and the afternoon milkshake rounds…

So at this stage after completing three months of the internship, I should be wrapping up with a final blog post before packing away my post-it notes and bidding goodbye to the rest of the team. However, the good news is my post-it notes and I will be sticking around for another month to man the fort with Michael whilst Rebecca is away on holiday. So there’ll be plenty more highlights to come for sure!

Click here for more info on our vacancy for the next Marketing and Box Office Intern

Bethan White
Marketing & Box Office Intern

Find your way around this Summer

As you may have noticed, we love the Spitalfields area. Both the spaces which we’re able to fill with sound (ranging from tiny Georgian drawing rooms, to the magnificent Christ Church Spitalfields) and also the great places to eat, drink and relax in.

To help you out this Summer Festival, we’ve put together a downloadable PDF venue pack. This includes maps, address details and travel information for all our Festival venues and in addition, recommendations of our favourite places to eat, drink and be merry – giving you options for rounding off your Festival experience in style!

You can also find all our venues and recommended bars and restaurants on our interactive Google map.

The handful of choice eateries are places recommended by the Spitalfields Music team, but do you know somewhere we don’t? Share with us your favourite places in Spitalfields and our surrounding area. Alternatively, check out the places we like and let us know what you think!

At the Cherry Trees

For a number of years we have been working with The Cherry Trees School in Bow and its extraordinary pupils, who experience emotional and behavioural difficulties. Workshop leader Roshi Nasehi reflects on their most recent work with us.

I’m writing this blog on the tail end of an intense, varied and extremely rewarding few months of work as a musician. Since January of this year I have composed and performed substantial live scores for Birds Eye View’s Sound and Silents Series and for So & So Circus Theatre Company at Southbank Centre and Jacksons Lane respectively. I’ve also worked on various new and ongoing music outreach programmes as a consultant and facilitator exploring singing, songwriting, improvising self-expression and reminiscence with groups of elders, people with special education needs and children.

Roshi and the boys from The Cherry Trees

One of my favourite projects of all has been on behalf of Spitalfields Music: a two-week intensive music residency at the Cherry Trees School for boys with emotional and behavioral problems which happens annually just before Easter. I have worked in maybe 50 schools in total over the years, but this school is definitely my favourite of all. It’s a very special environment and when I first visited in 2009, I was immediately struck by the staff’s ability to put in place routine and structure in a way that creates a sense of safety rather than being oppressive. They are also able to maintain this solid feeling of structure whilst being very person-centered with every child. It is my favourite group of teachers to work with. I have learnt so much from them. Every opportunity is taken to support the boys in developing their emotional literacy, encouraging eye contact or breaking down feelings. There is also the strongest sense of social pedagogy I have ever experienced in any school. Classes eat breakfast together, are responsible for looking after pets, recycling, growing vegetables, making bread and the whole school eats lunch together. Work ethic and academic achievement are by no means neglected. This group of staff are just expertly used to considering innovative ways of imparting skills and knowledge to these children who have complex social and emotional difficulties.

“I have learnt so much from them.”

Recently I co-led this project with wonderful junk percussionist Jim Cartwright for the third time. We were joined by two Music Animateur Apprentices, string players Alice Howick and Bimbi Urquhart. The project started off in a slightly bumpy way as following my Southbank Centre performance and other project work, I lost my voice (the first time in 20 years but I had been over-doing it). As a result I had to miss the first day and rethink the remaining opening sessions.

The boys feel things very deeply and working with them can be really affecting. My first reminder of this was the many questions about ‘how my voice was, was it better etc..?’ Jim had told me that some of the boys had literally closed their eyes and crossed their fingers following his ‘lets hope Roshi gets better really soon’ remarks. I’ve always strived to be as real as possible with them. Many of their difficulties come from not being able to manage their emotions and being extremely authentic about how they feel no matter how appropriate it is to express it or how vulnerable that makes them. I’ve always felt a desire to be as clear and genuine with them as possible.

Pupils and staff from The Cherry Trees School

I used my limited vocal abilities as an opportunity to introduce some quiet activities. A Tai Chi exercise for warming up, a song where the words drop out and turn into mime. I was really heartened by how well these were received. The Tai Chi exercise was reinterpreted to fit into a child’s world as the action of stretching and breathing became ‘climbing a giant ladder or milking a giant cow.’ I had taught the boys lullabies in the past and they would often request for me/us to sing these at the end of sessions and I was reminded about how important quiet time and stillness is for children. This is further reinforced by the school’s ritual of two minutes of silence before each session as an opportunity to refocus, to gather themselves, to breathe…

There was gradually also plenty of singing. Jim and I had decided to explore themes around ‘unity’ and ‘people coming together to celebrate or to protest’. An arrangement of Blame It On The Boogie went down really well with the youngest (5-7 year old) members of the school confidently singing solos into the microphone whilst several other boys were actually drawn to dance to it, both in class and on stage. I also made an arrangement of Labi Siffre’s Something Inside So Strong. The boys made up movements to go with the very poignant words and one little boy felt confident enough to sing verse 1 by himself. When he did several of us (including he himself) started to cry. Cindy Lee, the Blue class teacher encouraged and supported me to talk a little about the themes in the song and to even go as far as to tell them about my second cousin in Iran who was arrested last Autumn after attending a demonstration on the drying of Lake Orumieh. I was able to explain in a natural way how in certain countries people don’t have the freedoms we have here and how a song like Something Inside So Strong helped to raise awareness about the political situation in South Africa in the 80s with its powerful, hopeful lyrics.

Boys from The Cherry Trees School in rehearsal

Of course there were moments of reluctance from a few and the sad realisation for me that some of the now older boys who used to ask for ‘Tony Chestnut’ song when they little were more conscious these days about appearing ‘cool’. However there were so many great collective moments of exuberant engagement, high energy samba drumming and chanting, very funky sounding junk strings and original songs exploring ‘travelling round the world on imaginary motorbikes’ and coming together to form ‘One Voice’.

Whilst these boys have moments of acting out there’s just as much hiding under chairs and tables too. They are vulnerable children and there is an innocence to their anger. Cherry Trees manages to nurture and support these boys with genuinely innovative approaches and I feel really honoured to be making a contribution to their development through the powerful medium of music and grateful to Spitalfields Music for making it happen.

Roshi Nasehi
Workshop leader, The Cherry Trees School project 

[Images by Ruxandra Mateiu]