07/04/2014

Camac-Telynau Vining Education Workshops in support of the Third Wales International Harp Festival

The last Wales International Harp Festival (2010) particularly impressed the Camac team with its exceptional level of community involvement. The harp can be dismissed as a “minority instrument”, but in Caernafon, it’s at the heart of the message that music is for everyone. Caernarfon’s combination of outreach projects and international-level competitions and concerts also show that accessibility and high standards are not mutually exclusive, but rather belong together.

Inspired by this inclusive, open and rigorous spirit, we proposed sponsoring an education project for the 2014 festival. Together with the Canolfan Gerdd William Mathias Music Centre, we organized six workshops across Wales: three in the North, two in the South, and one in the Rhondda Valleys. We invited teachers from these regions to design a day of workshops, working with Elinor Bennett, for harpists of all levels. Many thanks to Elfair Grug Dyer, Glian Llwyd, Gwenllian Llyr, Mirain Martin, Dylan Rowlands and Amanda Whiting, for their energetic participation!




In our experience, not every young harpist realises that an international competition could be within their reach: it just isn’t always on their radar. Yet it is possible to perform even your first pieces to an excellent standard, and we wanted the course participants to realise that this high level, with all its accompanying exhilaration, is something to which they can aspire.

It was fantastic to see so many harpists come to the workshops. All in all, over one hundred and twenty took part! The content of the workshops ranged from jazz in Cardiff, to fantastic musical stories and games for the youngest in Portmeirion. Each workshop also featured harp ensemble work with Elinor – a big thank-you here goes to Creighton’s Collection for supplying the sheet music, which was an enormous help. We’re looking forward to seeing how many members of the workshops will turn up in Galeri on the final day of the festival, to play their ensemble pieces on the Galeri balconies - “a gallery of sound in Galeri”.




Wales has not escaped the recent swathes of cuts to music funding. To an extent, it is inevitable that music gets the duff end of a cash-strapped council’s choice between school music lessons, or – for example - school food. As sponsors ourselves, we also sometimes have to make decisions that give us no pleasure, but which engage with market realities. There is no easy answer, and good solutions usually lie somewhere between the almost entirely free market of the American arts’ funding model, and the almost entirely state-funded German system. What is, however, sure, is that music and culture are not community luxuries. Many primary schools have recently invested in iPads to develop literacy skills. It may be fun, but it is not necessary to use an iPad in order to learn to read. Most people do however need to be taught to read, and we also need music lessons in order to keep music alive. You don’t need to be a trained musician to enjoy music, but you need trained musicians to play it for you. Depending on where you come from, you may also need a music teacher to help you perceive that, whatever you do or go on to do as an adult, music is for you. Cut music lessons, and you don’t just have to use a different teaching method to achieve the same end, as when you don’t buy school iPads. Cut music lessons, and you remove an aspect of cultural experience, and of personal and social development, from children’s lives.

Music teachers, and groups of them in organizations like Canolfan Gerdd William Mathias, make a profound contribution to communities at all levels: young, older, professional, amateur, in the present, for the future and – or at least it should be thus – regardless of wealth. In our education project, it has been a privilege to celebrate teachers’ work, help them put on something special for their pupils, and, we hope, encourage new students to take up the harp!

Helen Leitner
Camac Harps, France

And
Elen Vining
Telynau Vining Harps, Cardiff 

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