Magic Music

Children’s Music Workshop (CMW) has been weaving its magic in Coalville schools. In a two-year project funded by the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, CMW is running sessions at different clusters of primary schools in the Forest using music to bring to life just what The National Forest means to local schoolchildren, and to develop their own sense of creativity.

Using themes based on the geographical location of the schools, professional musicians go into classrooms and devise words and music with the children. In Coalville the project has looked at how the Forest is transforming the former coalfield, sparked off by a visit to Snibston Discovery Park. Barnsley FC’s poet-in-residence Ian McMillan was just one of the inspirational artists working with the children. “His big booming presence in the school hall brought out the most amazing words and ideas from the children,” commented Rhiannon Harte, who as Project Co-ordinator of LANDshapes, The National Forest’s Heritage in the making project, is working closely with CMW. The young people were also shown a selection of photographs and asked where they thought they had been taken. “Beyond the stars!” “Asia!” “Canada!” came the replies. Composer and pianist Howard Moody declared: “What an amazing place you live in, surrounded by The National Forest: all these pictures were taken less than one mile from here!”

I am magic and powerful at the edge of the wood
I am dark and miserable the same colour as mud.
I am mythical and mysterious in the middle of the wood
I am shaped like a wolf, I would die if I could.