Music in the Community - University of Edinburgh
Music in the Community at the Reid School of Music emerges at an influential meeting point of a number of diverse concerns including: performing arts outreach, community development, creative arts therapies, and conflict resolution.
"Community music should be available on the National Health Service, it should be an entitlement for communities to have music.....it makes such a difference.... Community music is the yeast in the dough.....it lifts you above the nitty gritty and takes you out of yourself and makes you really believe in yourself...It is worth a thousand bottles of antidepressants, and there is just not enough of it. It is a wonderful, wonderful thing and children learn things from [community music] which help them with....maths and language and social studies. They learn to focus, they learn to listen, they learn lower order thinking skills like memory.....but they also learn the highest order thinking skill of creativity. They learn to create something and that helps them across the curriculum. Community Music is just so important when education is being cut...when music specialists are rare....when this is happening music in the community is vital and I am terrified that it is just going to fade away.....Every school across the globe would benefit from this."
Headteacher Hermitage Park Primary School
MITC runs a city wide music placement programme across the educational and social sectors.
For further information see:
Facebook @MusicInTheCommunity
Instagram @muscomedinburgh
“The best thing was ...getting the “wows” and the “I'm so proud of you”, and most of all, my brother said it was going to be boring but now he says it was very good!”
P6 Pupil
“I’ve been reminded why I came into teaching – to help children by meeting their needs and supporting them and make a difference in their lives. The success of the project has inspired us all.”
teacher
Head of External Affairs, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh
'“Over many years, Dee Isaacs has pioneered remarkable ‘Music in the Community’ programmes that culminated in major presentations in the exquisite landscapes of the Royal Botanic Garden. For these innovative productions, Dee marshalled, enthused, and inspired a small army of hundreds of local young primary school children, her team of music students, and collaborating designers and technicians. The musical compositions extracted superb commitment from the performance and elicited a terrific response from the audience - and all this outdoors in the garden at twilight. These innovative productions were both musically rich and theatrically dramatic and brought fresh excitement to the landscapes they unfolded - a remarkable achievement. “
“Having an opportunity to participate in such a project alongside my degree studies has been great and I feel that working with young children in order to put together a performance of such a standard has been beneficial to all involved”
Music in the Community Student,
University of Edinburgh
