Webster Primary School paints picture of school in music, art and film

Year 4 Pupils from Webster Primary School in Moss Side have created a portrait of their school in music, visual art and film.  

In a project called Portrait of Place the children worked with two Camerata musicians, a composer, artist and two RNCM students to produce pieces of music: a song which reflected their thoughts, feelings and experiences in their lives and an instrumental work inspired by a journey through the visual art they had created.

As a starting point the pupils took a walk around their local area, photographing places of particular interest.  These photographs then formed the basis of a large map which was later used as a graphic score for the instrumental piece.  In the final performance to parents and other pupils at the school each child played a short glockenspiel solo which they had composed themselves, whilst their peers accompanied in alternating percussion sections.

After the performance Y4 class teacher Lindsey Davies enthused ‘this was an inspirational, creative and innovative way to get the pupils involved in learning new concepts’.  Altamash a Y4 pupil described his favourite part of the project as learning how to play the xylophone, ‘it was really fun because we got to make any tune we wanted to‘.

Manchester Camerata has an ongoing relationship with Webster Primary School.  In the Autumn term musicians worked with Y6 on a Horrors of War project.