Issue No.
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Introduction from Baz Chapman, Programme Director 8. 45,587 people have taken part in Sing Up training and professional development activities – teachers, teaching assistants, headteachers, music specialists, parents and many more.
Just two school terms left for Sing Up in its current funding cycle, and we enter our final academic year in a very strong position. Here are our Top 10 stats for August:
9. Through a partnership with the National Children’s Bureau, we have launched 7 pioneering projects to support singing with Looked After Children.
1. Almost 90% of state primary schools have registered with Sing Up (78,219 individuals registered), and the Sing Up brand is widely recognised and ranked as one of the top initiatives for schools.
10. Research into over 100 schools by the Institute of Education has shown that children in schools engaged with Sing Up are around 2 years further advanced in their singing competency than those in non- Sing Up schools.
2. There are an average of over 3 registrants per school and 15 per Music Service.
As we continue planning a sustainable national model for singing, post- March 2011 (including support for new domains such as early years and secondary), we know we’re doing so on a solid platform. Sing Up is now recognised across the world for the positivity of its message, the flexibility of its approach and, most importantly, the support and partnerships it has enjoyed from across the music and education sectors.
3. 2,749 schools - 15% of primary schools - are on course to achieve a Sing Up Award for placing singing at the heart of school life. 4. 73% of Special Schools (nearly 700) are registered with Sing Up. 5. Sing Up is working in partnership with all 147 Music Services in England, along with several hundred other local, regional and national organisations, such as faith settings, Youth Music Action Zones, secondary schools and the Training and Development Agency for Schools.
In this bulletin, an update on our progress with Principles of Good Quality Vocal Leadership, a refreshed website (including the return of the much missed A-Z Song Bank search!) and some heartening news of Sing Up’s funded programmes living on into the future.
6. The website receives 8,000-9,000 visits per day, with users spending on average 8 minutes per visit. 7. Song Bank songs are downloaded an average of 7,100 times and streamed 98,600 times each week.
Baz Chapman Programme Director
Sing Up, the Music Manifesto National Singing Programme, produced by Youth Music with AMV-BBDO, Faber Music and The Sage Gateshead, supported by Government
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Workforce Development Update - Quality Back in 2009, we decided to begin defining what we believed to be quality singing. Everyone has their own definition of quality, and it is so difficult to compare singing (for example between beatboxing and choral singing). We do believe that if the leadership is good, then the outcomes with the children must be too, so we published some Principles of Good Quality Leadership in the Autumn 2009 Sing Up magazine on a pull-out poster, that teachers and leaders could refer to as an aspirational tool. Since then we have been testing the Principles around the country to make sure that they work for everyone singing with children, whether they be in a Special Educational Needs School, a choir school or a youth club. We also created some web pages dedicated to quality (www. singup.org/quality), on which we have published various articles by experienced contributors, and the general public have been making comments. So what did we find? Well the response has been primarily positive; singing leaders have found the Principles useful and aspirational. They have used them to help identify their strengths and also where they would appreciate further training. The Principles have really helped leaders to reflect on their own skills in a positive way. We have heard that leaders working with secondary school-age children and young people have found the Principles useful and that leaders of different musical disciplines are also using them. We have identified that all leadership is dependent on context – we can’t be all Principles at all times after all – and that the Principles are different from a code of practice (the Music Education Code of Practice, created by MusicLeader and Sound Sense for example). We do believe quality is about progression; where we start and finish on a journey of quality singing depends on the context, the purpose of the activity and the outcomes. The leader (using the Principles of Good Quality Vocal Leadership) takes the singers on the journey. We therefore need to have a go at describing what quality is and in the Autumn 2010 edition of the Sing Up magazine we are taking the first step. You will find examples of how the Principles look and feel practically and actively, in different contexts and with different people. We are working with our partners at the Institute of Education to identify what different models of sessions exist and we will be publishing examples of what we believe the journey of quality singing to look like on www.singup.org/quality. It is undoubtedly difficult to nail down one definition of what quality singing is, but we want everyone to be involved in the discussion, so please visit us and have your say.
Sing Up, the Music Manifesto National Singing Programme, produced by Youth Music with AMV-BBDO, Faber Music and The Sage Gateshead, supported by Government
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• Join our Facebook group for great ideas, videos, discussions and more! • Our Youtube channel has over 30 isntructional videos and clips of Sing Up in action! • Read all about it! Send us your Sing Up stories and you could feature on our website or magazine!
Resource update
Website refresh launched We’ve taken all of your comments and feedback over the last year and have been working to improve the Sing Up website – paying particular attention to speed and usability. As a result, we’re proud to announce the launch of our optimised site. By simplifying the design and navigation, we’ve made sure the site runs as fast as possible – even for users with slower connections. This will not compromise what the website has to offer. All Areas (including the Song Bank and Magazine Area) still have the same content. We’ve also added these exciting features: •
An A-Z search in the Song Bank
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The ability to like, comment and share your favourite News and Magazine pages
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All-in-one downloadable song bundles
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Create your own playlists from Song Bank songs
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Regularly updated feature carousels in every section
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SEN resources - easy to search new additions including VOCA and slowed down tempo tracks.
Song Bank search functions
We hope you enjoy it! If you have any further queries, check out our FAQs. Please also let us know what you think by writing to magazine@singup.org or by leaving us a comment on the site!
Magazine Delivery Date Please note that the Autumn 2010 issue of the Sing Up Magazine will arrive after half term. Following a Cabinet Office instruction to all Government departments and programmes to freeze spending on external communications activities, the Magazine process has delayed but will go ahead as normal. The Magazine will feature all of your favourite regular features, including some popular Christmas songs just in time for the holidays and an article on writing your own sports songs. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience.
Special projects Work is underway on a range of special resources, which we’re producing to support needs across the programme. The projects include a pack on singing and instrumental teaching, a booklet in support of KS2-3 transition and a set of resources for Young Singing Leaders. Watch this space for further details!
Sing Up, the Music Manifesto National Singing Programme, produced by Youth Music with AMV-BBDO, Faber Music and The Sage Gateshead, supported by Government
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Funded Programmes: Sing Up Communities and Flagship programmes A Summer of Singing and Signing There is much to celebrate with Sing Up Communities and Flagship programmes having so far directly engaged: • • • •
89,267 children and young people in singing activities working in partnership with over 1,066 schools and groups developing over 2,775 singing leaders 4,125 Young Singing Leaders.
These inspiring programmes have continued to embed singing in their school communities, and to bring singing to new schools and develop the singing leaders of the future.
Pegasus Opera Company in action (Photo: David Illman)
In Bedfordshire, the Head of Bedfordshire Music Service is so pleased with the success of the Sing Up Communities programme, that he is planning to focus Music Standards Funds money towards sustaining and extending the schools singing programme, Sing Quest, to benefit all lower schools in Bedfordshire, thereby embracing singing for all Key Stage 2 pupils into 2011 and beyond. He plans to extend Sing Quest to reach 130 lower schools and 4,000 children in Years 3 and 4. He also aims to support the ‘Community Voices’ strand of their Sing Up programme, to enable community singing projects to link closer with local schools, and to pilot and explore potential avenues of sustainability for them. Music and the Deaf’s Flagship programme, Great Baddow Signing Buddies, have begun a Signing Choir Club at one of their local feeder schools, Larkrise Primary, and a great deal of progress is being made in a short time. “The Buddies are getting more and more confident and will hopefully also sing now, as well as sign, and more Larkrise pupils attend the Club each week.” This is exactly the kind of thing they were aiming for when setting up the Signing Buddies project and is a model that can now be rolled out across the country. Pegasus Opera Company’s Sing Up Flagship programme made such an impact it attracted the John Lyons Charity to offer extended funding. This has enabled Pegasus to take their Sing Up developed work to benefit a further 6 schools in Ealing. Following the end of East Kent’s Sing Up Communities Girlguiding project, Julie Larner, Project Manager, is delighted to announce that “the Girlguiding Sing Up Challenge Badge has been designed along with the clauses to go with it, we are very excited. The Sing Up girls helped to deliver the Centenary campfire in May. They are going to help me to fill a 10 minute slot at the Youth Festival of Remembrance in Folkestone, so it is busy as ever!”.
Girlguiding Sing Up Challenge badge
Sing Up, the Music Manifesto National Singing Programme, produced by Youth Music with AMV-BBDO, Faber Music and The Sage Gateshead, supported by Government
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Awards The academic year 2009-10 saw the Sing Up Awards go from strength to strength with hundreds of schools throughout England achieving Awards for putting singing at the heart of their school lives. Some schools have given the following feedback on their Awards journey,
We ar www.singup.org
“Through completing our Award, the profile of music and singing within the school and community has grown from strength to strength. Singing has brought our school together.” “Working towards the Silver Award has encouraged and developed cross curricular planning so that music became topic-linked rather than bolt on learning. The feeling of all being together singing is magical!” “Working towards our Silver Sing Up Award involved all staff, children and wider community. The website had lots of great ideas and helped us to review our current practice and think about how we wanted to progress”. “Our Sing Up Award gave our whole staff a common goal to work towards and has really helped develop a singing ethos within the school”. Now, in September 2010, our aim is for schools in England to have achieved 1,000 Sing Up Awards by National Sing Up Day on 9th February 2011. With the number of schools currently working towards their
Aw a e a Sing Up Platinum Singing School
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Sing Up Awards we feel that we are well on the way to achieving this target. 1,000 Awards recognizing and celebrating singing being at the heart of school life in England will be a powerful legacy for Sing Up. With plenty of Awards resources available to schools, including Awards posters, new classroom wallcharts, the Awards handbook, Awards outdoor banners and a new Awards Tool available in September, schools can feel supported and encouraged throughout their Awards journey towards becoming a singing school. There are now 41 Platinum Award Schools acting as advocates for Sing Up and for singing within their communities. This community of ambassador singing schools is continuing to grown and we are looking forward to having all our Platinum Schools together at the Sing Up National Gathering in November 2010 to celebrate their achievements and to encourage and develop a network of these singing school ambassadors to continue on into the future.
Salterhebbie J&I School receiving their Sing Up Platinum Award
5 with AMV-BBDO, Faber Music and The Sage Gateshead, supported by Government Sing Up, the Music Manifesto National Singing Programme, produced by Youth Music
Events coming up! Kids’ choir open The Mayor’s Thames Festival The Sing Up supported Kids’ choir will be performing the world premiere of River Songs at the spectacular opening event of the Mayor’s Thames Festival on Saturday 11 September. The Mayor’s Thames Festival, London’s largest free outdoor arts festival, takes place over the weekend of Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 September. Kids’ choir is made up of 1,000 London primary school children from 70 schools from boroughs across the capital, and is part of a musical education project developed by the Mayor’s Thames Festival, aimed at increasing and supporting singing in schools. The project was first launched in 2003 and is supported by Sing Up.
River Songs is a mass choral work by internationally renowned British composer Jonathan Dove, with words by librettist Alasdair Middleton. The composition, which was commissioned as a result of Sing Up funding, was created specifically for the event and inspired by the River Thames. Howard Goodall, National Singing Ambassador said: “I am delighted that Sing Up has been able to help ensure that children in London’s primary schools can come together as part of the 2010 Mayor’s Thames Festival to celebrate the river which runs through the heart of our capital city. As the National Singing Ambassador I regularly have the opportunity to witness the amazing effect massed singing events like this have. Group singing is such a life affirming activity which unites people who may never have had the chance to meet except through song. I am sure that the experience will be one which the children, and their teachers, will treasure for years to come.” The project has been extremely well received by schools who have taken part, with all teachers confirming that they would like to take part in a similar project again and 98% agreeing that the pupils involved are learning new singing skills and techniques. For more details on the performance and the festival visit www.thamesfestival.org
Sing Up Training Programme Our Sing Up Training Programme kicks off for the Autumn term on 22 September with How To Improve Your Class and School Choir, led by Sue Hollingworth. Closely followed by workshops in venues across the country ranging from Early Years workshops, to Beatboxing and Going for Quality. Our programme of one-day workshops are led by top singing leaders, presenting training at the forefront of music education. Each workshop offers practical, insightful and inspiring tips for bringing out the best in pupils and making the most of the benefits of singing. Workshops cater for all abilities and educational settings and are available as INSET days upon request. To learn more about the Sing Up Training Programme visit www.singup.org/training.
Sing Up, the Music Manifesto National Singing Programme, produced by Youth Music with AMV-BBDO, Faber Music and The Sage Gateshead, supported by Government
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