Bringing more music into our schools

Four Winds is proud that our presence on the Far South Coast is leading to significant national, creative educators bringing their work to the region to enhance our Create and Inspire Program. These partnerships, as well as our work with local education providers will ensure that young people grow-up with regular access to live music and that they develop a lifelong passion for playing and experiencing the joy of making music together. They are the audiences, creators and performers of the future.

With the help of our national education partners who joined us in December 2018 for a special forum to discuss our education program (which we call Create and Inspire) we have developed a wonderful education model which, with your support – as well as contributions from our partners – will deliver the following:

• Regular singing and percussion activities in our schools.
• Performances at Four Winds so that our young people may meet and hear world-class musicians, share their experiences together and respond creatively.
• Performance opportunities for our young people at Four Winds, both in the Sound Shell and in the Windsong Pavilion so that they can experience the joy of playing and singing music for an audience.
• A teaching musician in residence in Bermagui for two terms each year.
• Coaching and mentoring of classroom teachers in partnership with the National Music Teacher Mentoring Program.
• Two professional development sessions per year for music leaders and teachers in our region.

The work Four Winds is undertaking within our Create and Inspire program can serve as a model for other organisations across Australia. We are proud to be sharing our model with other educators so that young people across the country might benefit from our work.

“Music should be considered more as a core activity than a peripheral one and given higher priority in school curricula” Alan Harvey Emeritus Professor; School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia.

Impact of our program

With your support, our program will:

• Provide regular access to quality live music for our young people during their time in pre- and primary school. They will develop an appetite, passion and love for live music as creators, performers and audience members. They are the creative future of our region.
• Give a performance platform to our young people in a unique, world class music venue. Our young people will perform alongside professional and international artists, their community and with/for their peers.
• Increase the number of music leaders and teachers who;
  – have the skills and confidence to deliver music activities for children
  – are committed to our region in the long-term to ensure we have access to great music leaders long into the future.

There is no doubt in our mind that our program will have a lasting impact on the creativity of future generations.

Investing together in the future of music, read more