News - John Kirkpatrick

NEWS ARCHIVE

3 Sep 2008:

JK ON TEACHERS TV

As schools go back after the summer holidays, some folkie teachers out there might be interested to see this, available either as a broadcast programme or as an on-line resource:
http://www.teachers.tv/video/21938.

For the last few years, I have been secretly wandering around Primary Schools in Bristol giving short concerts to pupils of Year 5 (aged 9 or 10, I think. We didn't have Year 5 when I was at school!). To begin with these excursions were in a duo with Paul Burgess, but economic necessity has caused more recent outings to be just by me solo.

Apart from giving the children a chance to see a real live musician standing there blasting out the traditional native music of their country, the idea was also to stimulate their creative writing. More recently, these concert spots have been followed by song-writing sessions in the individual classrooms, using one of the tunes that I'd sung earlier.

You can now see this process at work in a programme made by the Bristol based company Available Light TV, filmed last year at Westbury Park School. The Headmaster there, Alan Rees, who appears from time to time explaining the educational context of what's going on, has been the brains behind this project of getting live music into schools. Sadly, he has now just retired from teaching, so these opportunities for aspiring folk singers may now have come to an end.

But you can see me popping up half way through the thirty minute film, looking relentlessly jovial for the cameras, working with the children on a song to the tune of one of Fred Jordan's songs - "Polly's Father". The subject is linked to their classroom project that term - healthy eating - and concerns the growing of vegetables on their window sill.

Once you've recovered from the shock of witnessing this strange turn of events, please note that here is someone who will obviously have a go at anything, and rest assured that no offer of work will be dismissed out of hand without full and mature consideration!