This project is funded by: Elizabeth Jane Foundation & the Barbara Saunders Trust
Aims
This pilot project, which is being run by Ruth Montgomery, has started working with young deaf and hearing children so that they express their emotions, thoughts and feelings in understanding music through the use of art. The children are gaining an emotive understanding of music and developing a sense of creativity. They are being encouraged to understand the basic terminology, pitches, texture and timbre that music compositions and performances incorporate and this will then therefore establish their concept of music. Creating a piece of art will further support this and will in turn develop self-confidence and awareness. This project is allowing the deaf and hearing individuals to contribute to their thoughts and feelings physically and visually. Overall this project is attempting to focus on the compositional and creative concept of music.
Objectives
Ruth Montgomery who is deaf specialist music trainer has started this exciting project by visiting the Reading Deaf Centre and working with an number of deaf and hearing children-see links-and is soon to visit the Mary Hare Grammar School which she attended herself and later work at several local primary and secondary schools in the Berkshire region to hold a series of 2 hour workshops. These workshops will be split into an introductory, development, creative and production sessions. The first group of workshops will be focused on the artistic side and the next group workshops will be focused on the musicality. A particular music composition is selected for the children to listen to before the workshop to familiarise themselves with the sounds. An introductory session will incorporate Ruth teaching basic music rhythmic skills and expression and introducing key points of the musical piece. In the art workshop, this will be focused on the musical piece playing in the background, whilst the children explore colours, textures, and emotive expression. In the development section at particular points of the music piece, the children will be asked to express their thoughts in words and colour and start to develop ideas of different sounds, and compositional elements. The creative session will allow the pupils to fully contribute their rhythmic creations and develop ideas to their artistic piece. The final production session will allow them to create their own creative pieces both in art and music; representing the musical piece selected and this will be ready for a showcase. Ken Carter,who is the Founder of Decibels and its Voluntary Executive Director, attended the first workshop and has captured, with the permission of the parents, a number of video recordings which are now on the Decibels website. It is considered important that we record the children’s work in progress, capture their respective artistic and musical creations and help to promote this inspiring Colour Music project.
Outcome
It is Decibels" intention to enable the children to showcase their artistic and compositional work, host an exhibition and hopefully organise a performance night for their friends, families, siblings, professionals and interested people in the community.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A very special thank you goes to the Elizabeth Jane Foundation & the Barbara Saunders Trust for generously funding the Colour Music Pilot Project. Another big thank you goes to Ruth Montgomery for delivering this project along with Sannah Gulamani and Kayleigh Wright who helped to coordinate the entire programme.
