We’ve been working hard to adapt our activities and resources to make sure they adhere to COVID-19 restrictions and yet remain exciting and interactive! Here’s three ways your students can still participate in practical music lessons during lockdown!
Bring the experts direct into your classroom via Zoom or Teams!
These workshops are ideal for any local or partial lockdowns as the participants can access the workshops at school or from home!
They can also ‘book-end’ a world-music project and work well in conjunction with our Online Courses or World-Music Virtual Museum.
During lockdown we worked hard exploring the capabilities of live online video platforms for practical music workshops and have now developed an exciting suite of live online workshops with our expert facilitators using Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
We have already delivered these workshops to over 3,300 participants during and after the COVID-19 lockdown
Participants can play real instruments, junk instruments or body percussion. Our facilitators demo the authentic instruments and expert playing techniques whilst teaching the participants authentic music. Our facilitators have been mastering their Zoom/Teams facilitation skills so that the workshop content flows well with some moments of everyone playing music together un-muted, and other times with just a selection so that the workshops can be fully interactive!
For Zoom, up to 23 devices can join each session so that everyone can see everyone else - this doesn’t necessarily mean just 23 people - several people can share one device (if social distancing rules are still applied). There are a few Zoom settings that are very useful to ensure everyone can hear each other well and get the most out of the workshop.
We’ve adapted our workshop visits in 3 ways:
Sanitisation: a) all our sets of authentic instruments are cleaned in between each session using the same products that the NHS use. b) Most wooden or fabric-based sticks have been replaced with plastic ones that can be easily cleaned but still produce authentic sounds.
Social Distancing: We’ve adapted the layout of the instruments within the room to adhere to social distancing measures.
Swapping instruments: as the current government advice forbids participants swapping instruments within a session, we have adapted the content (and in some cases the instrumentation) of our workshops so that participants don’t swap instruments during a session but still play authentic music on authentic instruments and learn about the cultural significance of the music within the society of its home culture.
Check out our COVID-19 Risk Assessment for live workshop visits.
We have recently vastly added to our recorded online resources, mainly thanks to receiving a grant from the Arts Council England Emergency Response Fund that allowed us to create these high quality new resources.
Free resources:
45 x free YouTube workshops - each workshop is co-led by 4 or 5 of our facilitators and includes an online quiz to reinforce the learning.
Junk Percussion Arts Award project - as it says on the tin - a project using junk percussion that gains the participants an Arts Award Discover qualification upon completion! There is no cost to access the project, only Arts Award certification costs.
World-Music Virtual Museum - walk through our interactive virtual museum, click on each photo or video to see and hear each instrument and gain an understanding of the cultural role of the instrument and music!
#BodyPercussion #RecoveryCurriculum - join 200,000 children in over 1,200 schools in 24 countries who are already using this resource to that includes exercises that have been proven by neuroscience to reduce stress and anxiety, boost the immune system and improve creativity!
Online courses:
Our online courses have enough material to last at least a term of weekly practical music lessons. They include interactive quizzes, lots of cultural information appropriate to the music and ideas on how to compose in the style of each genre! Participants can also gain their Arts Award Discover qualification by completing a course.
African drumming (includes West African djembe & South African gumboot)
Brazilian samba drumming (includes Rio-style samba & Salvador-style samba reggae)
Indian Dhol drumming (includes bhangra & chaal)
Cajon (includes flamenco, calypso & pop/rock)