Building a Singing Network

Dave Camlin explains how he and his team are laying the foundations for making Cumbria a singing county.

The Sing Up initiative is a fantastic opportunity for us all. The vision of the UK as a singing nation, where children and their communities all sing naturally and enthusiastically as part of their everyday lives, is both exciting and highly inspirational. What does that mean on the ground, though? There are some important steps we have to take in order to make Sing Up a significant milestone, not just in terms of making some exciting projects, or even how we support children's singing in the mid-term, but potentially in the way we think about how our children and young people are educated. For example:

• How do we build strong singing networks between schools, music organisations and the communitiy?
• How do we make sure they are both cohesive and comprehensive?
• How do we sustain them?

SPREADING THE WORD

In Cumbria, we have a very dispersed population (500,000 people scattered over an area that accounts for nearly half of the entire North West region) and it's all too easy for initiatives to get lost in the huge distances between communities. Which is why our approach to Sing Up Cumbria has been to find ways of enabling even the most rurally isolated primary schools to get involved.

Denise, Janet and Lucy are the Study Support co-ordinators for Cumbria, each responsible for a number of Extended Services 'clusters' in their third of the county. In partnership with them, we're getting the invitation out to every Extended Services cluster (and through them to every school) in the county to be part of our Sing Up Community. If you're in Cumbria and haven't been invited yet, let us know!

The 12 clusters who responded are our first step in establishing a singing network for the county that can keep singing going long after Sing Up has ended - and be remembered as the catalyst that brought about a whole new approach to children and young people's creative engagement with their education!

When we met together for the first time, on 21 November, the energy and excitment in the room was palpable. There were self-confessed 'vocaphobes' - head teachers, cluster co-ordinators - who still joined in with gusto with the singing that started and ended that day. There were vocal enthusiasts, class teachers passionate about the value of singing but looking for ways to increase their own confidence in leading singing activity. There were music co-ordinators already delivering great practice in their clusters, but keen to share ideas with others. And all of them were united behind a common purpose: that we should do more singing because singing is good for us!

For our children to develop as confident singers and enjoy singing as a natural part of their education, they need to see those around them exuding that same confidence and enjoyment. Our voices are so personal to us (you don't need to see someone to know who you're talking to, do you?) that it's easy for us all to get nervous about putting our voices 'on the line' by leading singing activity. This is why we're placing singing networks right at the heart of what we're trying to achieve in Cumbria.

We believe that if teachers and others working with children have access to 'sage' places where they can sing, use their voice, practice leading, experiment, then their own confidence in singing with be lifted, and they'll be able to bring singing into all parts of the school curriculum and children's lives.

One of the teachers in our networks made the observation that singing could be "like water" in terms of its educational value. As little as five years ago, there weren't many schools with fresh water readily available for students to keep them hydrated and primed for learning. Now, water is recognised as an essential ingredient for children's learning. Singing can be thought of in the same way as cross-cutting discipline that requires (and develops) the integration of a number of learning styles.

MOVING FORWARD

So where are we now? We're just in the process of selecting the clusters that will go on to have a voice leader working with them for the next 18 months. Choosing these is not an easy process because there's so much enthusiam, dedication and good practice already out there.

Thanks to the integrated way in which Sing Up is working, all the various projects (for example Sing Up Communities and Vocal Force) can become part of a cohesive way forward for singing in our disparate county, ensuring that everyone who wants to be involved can have a clear point of local access to the wider networks, including the national initiative. And we can build on the great strengths of thse intiatives, drawing them into a single, clear strategy through the Sing Up Area Leader network.

As important as these time-limited projects are, the actual network itself will, we hope, be the real legacy of Sing Up. If we arrive in 2011 with a workforce of teachers, support staff and partners - as well as visiting artists - who are confident and experienced, able to support their pupils, and colleagues to sing, then it will all have been worth it.

Already, the clusters involved represent over 100 professionals - head teachers, class teachers, music co-ordinators, even the vicar's wife in one cluster - who are committed to bringing singing to their schools and communities. Those 65 schools will, we hope, go on to be advocates for singing so that the whole of Cumbria will truly be a singing county.

And yes, there are plans to have a big sing on top of a mountain - and yes, of course you're all invited.