IGNITE Workshop

IGNITE leads students into Lovely World of music

With funding from the Freedman Foundation, ‘Music. Play for Life’ is pioneering a new music-in-schools program: IGNITE.

Merrylands Public School is one of ten Sydney primary schools selected to receive the  program. Teacher, Sally Jackson, says her class of year 5 students have thrived under IGNITE, working closely with some of Sydney’s brightest young professional musicians to experience and learn about music: rhythm, melody, harmony, songwriting and performing, in workshops intended to light a love of music. Now in its second full year, IGNITE’s early baby steps have developed into huge strides. It runs over five weeks  - sometimes consecutive weeks, sometimes every fortnight, depending on the teacher’s classroom schedule - and culminates in a performance by the musicians and students for the whole school. The repertoire always includes one or two songs the students have written themselves in collaborations with the musicians.

Twenty five excited students strutted their new-found musical stuff in front of their peers and other teachers at the end of last term at Merrylands Public, performing, among other things, a world premiere of their inspirational new song ‘Lovely World,’ all of them decked out in coloured bandanas.

“The children have been so excited to work with musicians of such high calibre,” said Ms Jackson. “They’ve looked forward to every session as a highlight of the week. It’s been terrific.”

A few suburbs away, at Bringelly Public School, Zoe Hauptmann’s group, ‘The Good Guys’ were stomping, singing, dancing, playing and grooving with Leanne Sullivan’s composite year 4/5 class.

“Most of these kids really haven’t had much musical experience themselves,” said Ms Sullivan. “There’s only one child in the class who does anything with music outside of school. So this program has been incredible. I’ve even been able to work it into our literacy work in class, because we even wrote a rap as part of the song. Their sense of rhythm has noticeably improved, they’ve seen what can be done when they practise and really work at something. It’s been terrific.”

The IGNITE program was piloted in 2005 with a handful of schools and the results were powerful. Children who have had very little exposure to music, let alone performed themselves, benefit in many ways. Their confidence improves, they learn how to work together as a team, they learn about harmony, rhythm and the joys of singing. For many of them, IGNITE is their first experience of performing to an audience. And most of them can’t wait to do it again.

The program has been developed in response to national research which shows that, for most Aussie school children, access to an effective music education is declining. We’re lobbying hard to get the Federal and State governments to work together to make sure there’s more and better music education entrenched in the school system for children from the very early years of schooling. In the meantime, programs such as IGNITE can play an important part in filling a gap, providing students close-up access to excellent musicians and leading them in to the wonderful world of music making.

Sydney jazz musician, Stuart Vandergraaf, heads one of the IGNITE performing groups, ‘Switch’ which has been working with the Merrylands students.

‘We’ve been so impressed with Sally Jackson and her students. They’ve thrown themselves into this program and been keen to learn and create new things together. Of all the schools we’ve worked with so far, I think this Merrylands class has come up with one of the best songs. Now we’d love them to record it and make it a hit!”

Bassist Zoe Hauptmann says it’s a thrill to see how children thrive with some special musical intervention.

‘It’s so inspiring to work with these kids, to see them grow in confidence over the weeks, to hear them talk about music and want to learn more about it. They see that making music is about team work, about everyone having a part to play in creating something special.”

Ten Sydney primary schools have been involved in the Music Council’s IGNITE program. They are:

Eastlakes, St Peters, Mascot, Hampden Park, Bankstown, Matraville, Governor Phillip King, Bringelly, Green Valley, Merrylands.