SIOW Music has collaborated with Sound Pop Academy to produce a digital songbook transcribing their brilliant 3 part harmony flexible arrangements of pop songs to share with secondary schools and sixth forms. The music hub and Sound Pop Academy will run a FREE CPD session in your school to introduce the songbook and arrangements and support singing across the Key Stages.

As part of this programme, you will be offered a free log in to the Vocal Kit online platform to continue using the resources following your workshop with backing tracks and a progression framework for vocal learning.

This project will run from January 2025 and through the Spring term.

We are continuing our collaboration with The New Carnival Company to record with young people a new anthem to perform at Mardi Gras linked to their theme for this year. One or two settings will have the opportunity to record the final version of the song for our YouTube channel.

Schools signed up will receive a free songwriting and singing workshop from the hub in the summer term to learn the song to sing it before the parade heads off on the day in July 2025!

We are delighted to partner with Kiyafest in Kolkata to bring you an opportunity to participate in their Kolkata International Youth Arts Festival via a Global Orchestral Collaboration: "Mind The Gap": A world-class orchestra comprising 100 musicians from Kolkata who will be performing on stage and 70 musicians from the UK who will be performing on screen, led by the renowned Sarod maestro Dr. Rajeeb Chakraborty in collaboration with Milap (Liverpool).  This innovative stage 2 screen format will truly be the first of its kind. 

Suitable for instrumental players and singers from grade 3 upwards, flexible arrangements of pieces have been created for ensembles to rehearse and record their parts and contribute via video to the final performance in 21st June 2025 on a screen at the festival in Kolkata. 

If you are interested in this amazing opportunity Dr Rajeeb Chakraborty will meet with you the week prior to February half term to explain the project and the repertoire and any support you need to learn this, the music hub will provide.  This will culminate in a recording session in April which will be included in the final event. 

This is a fantastic opportunity for your students to collaborate with international musicians, learn from renowned experts, and perform on a global stage. Please contact nia@siowmusic.org to discuss this opportunity in more detail if you are interested in participating.

Our Day Will Come

A series of new songs sung by the Isle of Wight primary schools to celebrate who we are

Building on the music hub’s and English Heritage’s annual Vocal Prom at Carisbrook Castle which is an open-air public performance of young people’s voices Southampton & IOW Music and IW Cultural Education Partnership have commissioned a series of songs under the collective title Our Day Will Come as an expression of what it is to be a young person growing up on the island. Set within the context of a changing demographics and the consequent need to consolidate the number of primary schools this is an opportunity to both celebrate and champion the hopes of the almost 7000 young people currently in primary education here.

Songwriting workshops will take place during the spring term in identified schools giving young musicians the opportunity to express themselves through composition and write their own verses unique to their school.  The verses will be incorporated into the songbook resources produced and feature in the final performance.  Vocal workshops to introduce and learn the songbook material will also take place in all participating schools.  Alongside workshop activity digital resource will be created to support wider school singing, the national curriculum and SEND adaptations including CPD for teachers and practitioners reaching across the whole island. 

The project will culminate in a powerful massed singing event on the bowling green at Carisbrooke Castle on Thursday 12th June 2025 5.30pm – 7pm (reserve date for inclement weather Tuesday 17th June 2025) featuring young voices singing songs written by the participating schools, local artists and the island’s young musicians.  Friends and families are invited to come and watch on the raised areas around the green and bring a picnic.

4pm - 4.30pm School ensembles/groups arrive 

4.30pm - 5pm Sound checks 

5.30pm - 7pm Concert

Join students and teachers from Platform one College of music to hear performances from bands, young people and learn lots about events, sound, music technology and jobs in the music industry.  Details of spaces available will come directly from Platform One to your settings so one to look out for!

Schools are invited to either the Classic Boat Museum in Cowes or the Shipwreck Centre and Maritime Museum in Arreton to take part in workshops and a performance to mark the RNLI Bicentenary celebrations. 

A group or class of 30 students will take part in a half day set of workshops (singing sea shanties, dancing a hornpipe and dramatic storytelling) along with touring the museums and learning about water safety. Children are then invited back after school with their parents to perform.  Following on from attendance parents will be given vouchers to attend the heritage site in the future. 

Contact ian.vallance@maritimearchaeologytrust.org for more information or to register interest

Opera for the Very Young – Stories through Sound 

OperaUpClose is a national touring opera company with storytelling, partnership, and innovation at its heart. Intimate in scale, mighty in impact. OperaUpClose will run a series of collaborative and co-creative workshops on the Isle of Wight taking children and teachers on a journey from reception through to Year 2 as we develop a new opera based on the beautiful picture book Flotsam by David Wiesner.

Led by a creative team including composer/writer and designer the workshops will engage children and their teachers, using Flotsam - recognised by the BookTrust (2024) as “breath-taking, intricately detailed” - as inspiration for a co-creative process that will combine music-making with visual art and notation through mark-making. The aim is to build teachers’ skills and confidence in delivering creative music activities, while also generating material for a new opera for early years that will tour schools and theatres in Autumn 2026.

This project, run in partnership with the Southampton & Isle of Wight Music, is central to a broadening of an early years music strategy that integrates opera into music curriculums and explores the long-term benefits for pupil's creativity and appreciation for the arts.

We are looking for 2/3 schools that can take part in a series of workshops working with the same group(s) of children across the activity and spaces will be allocated on a first come first served basis:

DATES

Reception: w/c 16 June 2025 – 45 min workshop led by the OperaUpClose creative

team

Year 1: w/c 22 September 2025 – 45 – 60 min workshop

Year 1: w/c 26 January 2026 – 60 – 75 min workshop led by the OperaUpClose

creative team with an accompanying CPD workshop for teachers led by

Southampton and Isle of Wight Music

Year 2: Autumn 2026 – opportunity to attend performance of new opera Flotsam

either in school or theatre

Currently fully booked but please email Lynn.Beckwith@SIOW.org if you wish to be put on the reserve list