Thanks to our ongoing partnership with Aurora Orchestra, learners at TreeHouse School have enjoyed exploring the music of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky over the course of this last half term.  

We have done so in a range of ways, through active music making on percussion instruments, multi-sensory listening, and through Makaton sing and sign opportunities to name but a few. This has been loads of fun for learners and teachers alike, and we have filled our classrooms with music, dance and games inspired by the composer's Nutcracker suite. In the process of accessing this repertoire, we have truly made it our own, and a it has been a reflection of the ways in which we enjoy learning here at school. 

To bring this pilot to a joyful conclusion, we welcomed musicians from the orchestra into our school in COVID-secure ways to enjoy interactive end-of-term concerts that brought our learning to a close, enabling us to apply and generalise some of the skills we have refined over the six weeks.  

A London school like ours has a duty to increase our young people's cultural capital, to facilitate genuine engagement with the best practitioners the city's scene can offer and put in place steppingstones towards meaningful participation in community arts.  

This project has done all those things so, on behalf of our learners, many thanks to everyone involved! 

(Photo credit: Stanton Media)