Site Title

TASC and Manchester Camerata both deliver a series of projects each year for pupils and teachers at Webster Primary School. TASC’s projects focus on architecture and the natural environment, including bringing pupils into Manchester city centre to explore buildings and structure, and designing a new playground with them.

​

In April/ May 2017, both organisations delivered a project called ‘Do You Live Around Here?’ in which two classes of year 4 pupils explored their local area through music. TASC began the project; bringing the pupils to MMU’s art and design building (which is close to Whitworth Park) and mapping buildings/ landmarks close to the park with the pupils. This included their school and RNCM (where Camerata was based). They realised that the old bandstand which used to be in Whitworth Park would have marked the centre of all of these buildings, and thus they decided to re-create their own mini bandstands using wooden sculptures. They also created drawings and recorded sounds of things they heard in the area.

​

A Camerata composer and two musicians from the orchestra then took all of this artistic material and worked with the pupils over four days to create a new piece which brought all of the pupils ideas together. This included singing, percussion and movement. The piece was performed on the fifth day at the Whitworth Art Gallery. The headteacher commented how impressed he was that a project like this was able to bring pupils’ parents out of their small local area and into a cultural venue, which they might never have been before. He saw them engage in dialogue about all of the different buildings you can see from the Whitworth, and the parents felt pride that their son/ daughter had performed in this space.