Our partnership programme also aims to increase access to music making for local families and young people from less affluent backgrounds and underrepresented groups.
20 hours of
bespoke professional workforce development
In the 2021-22 academic year
The Tri-borough Music Hub (TBMH) is the lead organisation overseeing the delivery of music education in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham and the City of Westminster. An award-winning organisation, TBMH is a centralised local authority that receives core funding from the Department for Education via Arts Council England, working with schools, pupils and the workforce.
The Royal College of Music works closely with TBMH and the Royal Albert Hall as strategic partners, helping to achieve the following aims:
We plan our widening participation work based on a detailed understanding of the areas of need in the local area. Through this relationship with the TBMH, RCM Sparks has regular links with a number of state schools.
RCM Sparks works closely with three partner secondary schools and three partner primary schools, all within the Tri-borough Music Hub area. We deliver bespoke strategic music programmes, operating in school and at the Royal College of Music, calling upon the RCM’s links with first class music educators, workshop leaders and our own students, (RCM Sparks Mentors) to engage pupils in music making from early years through to A Level, supporting children and schools to give them a life-long love of music.
Our three primary partners benefit from weekly early years Dalcroze, music and movement sessions, lunchtime concerts, bespoke workshops and projects for pupils with speech and language difficulties, including dyslexic students. All other Sparks events are flagged with the schools with the majority being free to access for pupils and parents.
Our partner primary schools are feeder schools for our secondary partner schools, continuing the vital musical work that has taken place in Key Stage 1 and 2. Secondary school pupils can access our Springboard composition weekend courses at the Royal College of Music, creative careers days and bespoke workshops and events (conducting workshops, creative music production support, Gifted and Talented sessions and concert support).
Our partner schools are:
IntoUniversity and RCM Sparks work in partnership to reach local young people who would not normally engage with higher education pathways. Sparks delivers workshops with IntoUniversity centres in Brent, Haringey, Hammersmith, North Islington and North Kensington and also offers visits to the RCM. These workshops offer a range of opportunities for participants to develop and sustain their interest in music and broaden horizons to Higher Education settings in general. In 2022, 130 participants from IU and 15 RCM students were involved in RCM workshops.
'I learnt about music and improved my confidence.'
'Staff and students from RCM Sparks always do an amazing job of engaging students and supporting them in creating their own music.'
'The best thing about the programme was the Royal College of Music because we made our own music.'
'The sessions are well-structured, age and ability appropriate, and do well in building a safe-space in which children feel confident to perform their work.'
Convo, an ambitious new work by RCM alumnus composer Charlotte Harding, commissioned by the Tri-borough Music Hub, the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal College of Music premiered at the Royal Albert Hall on 7 March 2019.
A massed instrumental ensemble of Tri-borough music hub young musicians played side-by-side with professional instrumentalists, together supporting a massed chorus of around 1,000 primary, secondary and special school pupils. The huge ensemble was led by the internationally renowned conductor Ben Palmer. The performance was the culmination of an extensive two-year project of creative music making and development across the Tri-borough music hub, which aimed to embed best musical practice as an essential part of school life, giving invaluable musical opportunities to all pupils in the area irrespective of their background.
We are very grateful to John Lyon’s Charity for their generous support of Convo.
Convo
See and hear more about Convo from the people involved, including RCM composer Charlotte Harding
Convo follows the success of Seven Seeds, a large scale performance of a newly commissioned vocal work involving 160 schools, more than 20 Royal College of Music students from and 150 music co-ordinators. In November 2015 Seven Seeds was awarded the prize for 'New Music' by the Music Education Council of Great Britiain (MEC) and shortlisted for the 'Best Classical Music Education Initiative'.
RCM Sparks has actively engaged as a consortium partner in the Tri-Music Together project, funded by Youth Music and led by the Tri-borough Music Hub. Summer 2018 marked the end of an initial two year project to enhance Early Years music provision from birth to age five in the Tri-borough area. Over the two years the programme engaged with 120 settings, 249 early years practitioners and 148 music leaders through a broad programme of training, peer-to-peer reflection, mini-projects and the development of resources.
The Tri-Music Together project continues to advocate for quality Early Years music education and strategically supports Music Education Hubs in England to develop their Early Years music provision.
One of the aims of Tri-Music together project was to create resources to support early years music and to create a legacy. Musical Development Matters is a brand-new guidance document that has been written to support those who work with young children in early childhood. Supporting materials have also been created and are available from Youth Music.
This is a partnership project with the LEFY nurseries and RCM Sparks.
The aim of the project is to develop the music skills of a team of Early Years practitioners ‘Music Champions’ in order to enrich music in their nursery settings for children aged 0-4, with a long-term aim to improve practice across the organisation.
The overall objective is to increase the skill level of practitioners in order to rate themselves as a platinum standard music setting, based on the Tri-borough Music Hub Self-Evaluation Tool.
The Musically Inclusive Forum brings together nationally and internationally renowned music and arts organisations to ignite the conversation for improving access and outcomes for young disabled people across the music and arts sector. RCM Sparks co-ordinate experts and discussions at the forums and partners are asked who they would like to hear from to help develop their targets.
Turtle Song is a Turtle Key Arts, English Touring Opera and Royal College of Music partnership project which brings music, movement, and singing to people with Alzheimers and all forms of Dementia.
Over the course of the project, participants write the lyrics and compose the music for their own song cycle with the help of an animateur, a composer, Royal College of Music students or a Royal College of Music ambassador. The piece is then performed and recorded on DVD so that it can be shared with family and friends.
Since the first Turtle Song at the Royal College of Music in 2008 it has been introduced in Cambridge, Wolverhampton, Dulwich, Suffolk, Oxford, Stockton-on-Tees, Leeds, Norwich, Reading, Newbury, Croydon, Hackney, York, Waddesdon Manor, Chester and Camden. There are now on average five held each year.
In 2022, there were 80 participants in the Turtle Song project, with 4 RCM students and 4 RCM graduates involved.
Turtle Song was recently featured in the BBC documentary Holding Back the Years.
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