As part of our Educational Outreach programme, in partnership with Cornwall Music Services Trust, we develop and run workshops for local schools in the Penzance area.

The aims of the workshops are to give children experience of listening to high quality, live, musical performance, played by expert musicians, to inspire, stimulate and educate and to introduce them to a wide range of traditional ‘acoustic’ instruments. Access to high quality music making, and accessing that educational pathway for themselves, is something schools – some of them very small, and remote – simply cannot offer alone. Through these interactive workshops, we hope to encourage and inspire the children to take advantage of the opportunity to take up the instrumental tuition on offer through their schools and to encourage them to start playing together in groups, bands or orchestras.

The model has proved so successful, in the future we are planning to take the workshops further afield to other parts of Penwith and Cornwall.

Whilst we are aware there is no ‘quick win’ and cultural investment is a slow process, we are already seeing positive outcomes from our outreach work. Three schools have since taken up ‘First Access’ brass – this means that about 55 pupils will have a whole term of learning a brass instrument. Newlyn School now has ‘First Access’ strings, so a whole class of 26 pupils will have access to a term of violin tuition. Individually, some pupils have subsequently signed up separately for violin and trumpet lessons with CMST teachers.

In order to carry out this important work, we have received funding from a number of organisations: Penzance Council, Cavatina Chamber Music Trust, Cornwall Community Fund and the Postcode Lottery.