Lisburne School Ramp It Up! workshop
Ramp It Up! is Real Accessible Musical Participation for disabled children and young people in school. Projects focus on using each school’s own equipment and training teaching staff up on assistive music technologies (AMT) in order to ensure a lasting legacy of accessible music-making. Activities include playing, performing, recording and learning about music.
At Lisburne School in Stockport, a special school for children with complex learning needs, Drake Music associate Merlyn Sturt is leading two separate classes through a programme of music workshops, which will culminate in a joint live performance. The children have learnt a number of new songs and rhythmic exercises. Merlyn has also been showing the children and their teachers how to use the school’s Soundbeam, an award-winning device which uses sensor technology to translate body movement into digitally generated sound and image.
The children have been using the Soundbeam to trigger sound effects as part of a dramatic narrative based on Harry Potter. During their performance, for parents, carers and friends, the children will create noises to accompany a creepy woodland scene, which is projected on a screen using slides on a laptop. One pupil uses the Soundbeam to create howling wind noises whilst the rest of the group play percussion instruments. Another pupil plays a heavily reverbed recorder down a microhone to create ghostly sounds.
Earlier on in the project the Soundbeam and various switches were used to create the impression of a rocket launch controlled by pupils walking like astronauts across the Soundbeam’s path.
Ramp It Up! is currently delivered in schools across London/ South East, the North West and South West. If you are interested in bringing Ramp It Up! to your school, please contact us:
London:
LONinfo@drakemusic.org
South West:
SWinfo@drakemusic.org
North West:
NWinfo@drakemusic.org
