Creative (continued)
MATRAVERS SONG WRITING CLUB MEETS WITH LOCAL HISTORIAN
Back in February our song writing club wrote a song called ‘The White Horse’ as a response to a brief set by Wiltshire Music Connect to write a song about anything Wiltshire. Our group of budding songwriters from year 8, including Amy Wheeler, Skye Greatwood, Layla Boydell, Holly Maggs and Michael Mead-Male obviously chose to write about the part of Wiltshire’s heritage that is right on our doorstep, the Westbury White Horse. The song was performed on a number of occasions, including at our biggest concert of the year, the annual Lions concert. About a month after the concert we were contacted by local historian, Brian Edwards, who read about the performance in the paper and was fascinated about what had inspired Year 8 students to write the song. He asked if he could come in to interview the students and, of course, we said yes!
Mr Edwards is a visiting research fellow at UWE’s regional history centre. He is particularly interested in how ‘normal’ people are affected by the history that surrounds them and he was really fascinated by how 12-13 year olds could feel so passionately about the White Horse. He asked us about how the lyrics in the song came about and what parts of the song we were most proud of. Then Skye, Laila and Amy performed the song live to him.
Leith, also Year 9, sang “Fly Me to the Moon” as a solo. We tried to perform songs that the older audience would know and enjoy and we think we succeeded in doing just that.
RICH COTTELL SONG WRITING WORKSHOPS
In the last week of Term 4 we were visited by Rich Cottell for 2 days. He worked with over 100 students from Year 7 right up to Year 13, giving them an insight into the music industry and doing an introduction to song writing.
Rich is a professional songwriter and composer who lives in Devon. After writing and releasing his own debut album he then moved on to writing for others, including large names such as The Wanted and also television commercials. He has a large online presence and was able to give advice to our Year 10 BTEC Music students about managing that side of publicity. He also worked with our Year 13 BTEC Performing Arts class to compose a comedy song about ‘social media’ for their ‘Variety Performance’ unit.
By working with our students, Rich has given us some new insight into the music industry and some new tips and tricks for writing our own songs.
This project was funded from our winning the 2018 Wiltshire Music Connect song writing competition, for which we received £1000 to further develop song writing at the school.
MFEST
This year MFest will be another celebration of the Music, Dance and Drama talent from across the school. We look forward to a brilliant day in the sun full of fun. This year’s headliners are Rich Cottell and New Rules.
Mr Edwards is working towards giving a paper about local history and peoples’ responses to it and he seemed very certain that he would be mentioning our school and the song as part of his arguments. It was an interesting and fun experience!
WESTBURY LIONS SENIOR CITIZENS’ AFTERNOON TEA PARTY
In May the choir were invited to perform at the annual Senior Citizens’ Afternoon Tea Party, hosted by the Westbury Lions. The choir performed a number of songs, including “There’s Me”, “Man in the Mirror” and “The White Horse”, which was composed by Amy, Skye and Layla from Year 8. Alicia Renton (Year 9) also sang “Don’t Rain on My Parade” as a solo and Faith
www.matravers.wilts.sch.uk
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