Silver Horizon Helps Keep Kids On Beat
Silver Horizon is delighted to support Foxhill Primary School in their aim to keep making music.
Based up in Queensbury, just down the road from the world-famous Black Dyke Brass Band, Foxhill treats music as one of their core subjects - there’s a school brass band, a choir, and students even receive daily musicianship training. Headteacher Sally Hey has previously been quoted by the BBC crediting music for boosting the school’s results “way above the national average”, and we’re inclined to agree - there are a lot of studies showing the positive impacts that teaching music can have on other subjects such as Maths.
However, the Coronavirus pandemic is putting all this music-making at risk. When students return to school in September, it is very unlikely they will be able to resume their singing and brass-playing due to the as-yet unknown risks of spreading Coronavirus through these activities. For example, 102 choristers in Amsterdam fell ill with the virus shortly after a performance on March 8th, although scientists are still divided over whether it was singing that caused the infections or something else.
Planning ahead for the new school year, Foxhill have elected to replace the majority of their brass and singing sessions with drumming workshops. However, again due to Coronavirus, they are not able to share sticks between students and instead require a pair of sticks for each student!
Silver Horizon have provided 60 of these pairs of drumsticks via the Infinity Project and remain committed to supporting music education within schools wherever possible.
“It is clear that prioritising music at schools can boost students’ performance in other academic subjects and we are glad that Foxhill aren’t letting Coronavirus stop them from gaining all the music-related goodness” said Luke Taylor of Silver Horizon.
“We have passed on some ‘insider info’ on how some of our drumming workshops are planned, implemented and executed and we hope these will also be of use to the school. We hope they find these useful and would be more than happy to work closely with them to devise a tailored programme for their students”