We work with schools, music education hubs and their partners to develop bespoke music-making projects which are both creative and inclusive, tailored to the setting and participants involved.
Our team bring their ideas, energy and enthusiasm to each new project. We work with you to understand the needs and choices of the young people involved, the priorities of the schools and partners and match that with the skills and creativity of the musicians we work with.
From this we develop new projects to achieve exciting outcomes for all involved. We can work with groups of mixed abilities, in both mainstream and specialist schools.
Early Years Projects
New approaches to inclusive music making with Early Years children and their families or nursery/school.
Tiny Techies
One exciting project which began in 2021 is Tiny Techies!
This fun project explores how Drake Music’s innovative, technology-oriented approaches to inclusive music-making can be adapted to positively impact the learning and development of Disabled children in the early years.
Tiny Techies is a new, pilot project in partnership with Live Music Now, supported by Masonic Charitable Foundation and Ragdoll Foundation.
Home Is Where The Music Is
Home is Where the Music Is was a pilot Early Years programme where we worked with Soundcastle to deliver online music-making sessions in partnership with the ‘Somewhere to Belong’ network. This is a network for families with neurodivergent early years children, run by the Lloyd Park Children’s Charity in Waltham Forest.
We delivered 1-1 sessions and group dance parties and had fantastic feedback like this:
“Just wanted to say a huge thank you for yesterday. It was truly amazing. My son and I really enjoyed it. Even more amazing was that he was engaged for the whole session and also he was communicating with you both in his own way”
Schools and Music Hubs
Read on for more examples of fun creative and accessible music projects we have delivered in partnership with schools and music hubs:
Together with Tech
Together with Tech was born from the idea of bringing together pupils from mainstream and specialist schools to make music.
We wanted to create a situation where all the young musicians would be at the same level of ability. To do this we used only new instruments and technology, introducing each participant to new ways of making music.
They learned alongside one another, developing together and connecting through the shared experience.
AMT Ambassadors
Our Associate Musician Jon Hering has worked in Springwood Heath Primary School for several years and understood the ethos and make-up of the school very well. This school has a mixed population of Disabled and non-disabled children, with their policy for additional needs informed by the motto “Success together through caring and learning”.
In this environment Jon put forward the idea of a project involving peer learning and AMT Ambassadors grew from there. AMT Ambassadors are children in Years 5 and 6 who are trained up in using music tech and then lead sessions for younger children in their school.
This peer-to-peer teaching delivers powerful musical, personal and social outcomes.
R&D In The Classroom
Technologists from our DMLab community worked with the Music Education Hub in Kent to co-deliver a programme of musical instrument building & testing in two schools; The Beacon School in Folkestone and Goldwyn School in Ashford.
A new software platform was created to allow up to 10 BBC Microbits to be used together to make instruments. The Microbits make coding new instruments easy, so that the young musicians could come up with new ideas for ways to make music, then build and test them right there and then!