Musical workshops inspiring a sense of wonder in the endless combinations of sounds and rhythms in poetry, song and nature.

Participants: 90 students between the ages of 10 and 14 from Horsenden Primary School.

Artist: Michael Szpakowski (video artist, composer and facilitator)

90 students between the ages of 10 and 14 from Horsenden Primary School engaged in an exploration of the seasons through spoken/sung words and rhymes, and collaborated to create a collection of musical pieces using a variety of musical instruments. This project supported children’s reading ability by exploring rhythm through music, as well as the creation of a permanent sound artwork for the school garden that changed with the seasons to inspire a sense of wonder in the endless combinations of sounds and rhythms in poetry, song and nature.

The artist Michael Szpakowski worked with 14 small groups of pupils doing music and sound drawing on quotes from nursery rhymes and using a range of stimulating and unusual ways of making sounds. The work was digitally recorded in order to create a “generative” piece of music and sound-scape. Generative means that the computer is programmed to play back the fragments of the sound in a semi-random order so that they would constantly unfold and combine in different ways, like a kind of musical kaleidoscope.

Partners:Creative Partnerships, Horsenden Primary School.