Live Music Now Scotland announces a new creative learning initiative

Emma Martin with children from Invergarven School in Girvan

Live Music Now Scotland (LMNS) has announced a striking new creative learning initiative whereby LMNS musicians Emma Martin (singer/songwriter), Sophie Rocks (harp), Sally Simpson (fiddle) and Neil Sutcliffe (accordion) have been placed in five additional support needs schools and units in South Ayrshire and East Ayrshire, to work collaboratively with teachers and senior leadership teams to identify ways to teach the curriculum creatively through the medium of music.

The project is a combination of training created in response to the teachers' and musicians’ needs and music delivered through collaborative learning. The musicians will make 40 visits over the two years, collectively delivering 720 workshops.

The project is in partnership with South Ayrshire Council’s Creative Learning Network, thanks to funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Teacher Development Fund. The hope is that, in the long-term, similar initiatives can be rolled out more widely and help encourage further investigation into the benefit of this model of artists and teachers working and learning together and the impact that teaching the curriculum through the arts subsequently has on improving communication and language skills, and aiding overall learning in an additional support needs setting.