Kaimes School Workshops Interview

The Frontiers project has been an amazing multifaceted experience which has now matured into its third full term. Each term is made up of a number of different workshops which work with various partner groups. Every workshop will bring the opportunity to learn music to young people, however they are vastly different in many ways… To try to understand more of what each group has been getting up to we have had a quick chat with the tutor of the Kaimes school workshop Harry Whalley.

Harry is an experienced musician, teacher composer and long-time collaborator and supporter of Tinderbox. As part of Frontiers he has been delivering workshops at Kaimes, a school that caters to children with additional support needs. This is what he had to say about his workshop with Kaimes:

Tell us a little bit about your time spent doing the music workshop at Kaimes School:

Before I came to Kaimes, Jack had done a couple before, so they knew Jack and they had already done Bethany Lane.

One of the really good thing about Kaimes is that we had Angelica the Music teacher and Mary Walters who is the Art Teacher take part. Angelica teaches quite a lot of instrumental lessons and she had different types of colour notation called figure notes for them.  She was able to take the music we learnt in the workshops and then teach them in their individual music lessons – this really helped speed things up and make continuity throughout the week. Some of the student are very good players already and some had not played at all. There were a few guitarists and they knew chords. We also had a good Violin player and a student keen to learn the trumpet.

Did you have any particular moments that stood out to you during the workshops?

No, not really, but what I enjoyed was that the rehearsal after time become more and more and more focused. In the first few weeks we were just getting to know each other and used to the routine, but in the second term we learnt loads of material! – it really took off! That was also partly for the concert organised in the school for people that couldn’t make Hidden Door, so we were just rehearsing for that. It was nice that they took it so seriously and would go home and practise too. We had guitars, violins and lots of Boomwhackers and some percussion and Mary (Art Teacher) played the saxophone so it was really good when we all played together. They really liked Siaka’s Song, and some of them really liked Fire, by Jimmy Hendrix. They also wrote a song based on the Sea and it became an intro to Siaka’s song , so we had collected a big cloud of works to do with the Sea and then we wrote out the rhythms and then picked the chords, it was a a fun way to do composition.

And what I liked was that in the end we were rehearsed enough that we could have a good performance even without Tinderbox, we had a really good sound!

Thank you Harry!

Here is what the young musicians from Kaimes had to say!

‘We looked forward to Wednesday afternoons’

‘It made me feel very happy indeed’

**We also want to say a huge thank you to the apprentices, Jenni, Anna and Sam who did a fantastic job throughout all the workshops and also Angelica and Mary who have been a great support in making Frontiers happen.