Aurora Orchestra’s creative learning programme supports teachers to bring rich musical education and experiences to all children. The Aurora Classroom programme encompasses:

• digital resources for primary and secondary schools
• flexible cross-curricular resources for SEND settings
• training for teachers from our team of experts
• world-class programme of live activity for children and young people.

Music at the heart of your primary school

Bring Aurora Orchestra into your classroom using our free music resources, designed for music specialists and generalist teachers alike. Explore our fully planned 10-week units of work or build your own music lessons from our library of hundreds of activities and audio excerpts.

Supporting your teaching at KS3, GCSE and A level

Aurora Classroom for secondary schools focuses on bringing high quality resources, films and audio excerpts together in one place – without the adverts and for free! Explore our teaching support materials for each Key Stage – from an introduction to the orchestra for KS3, to detailed set work resource packs for GCSE and A level music specifications.

Build your own unique SEND programme 

Aurora’s inclusive and adaptable resources for children with additional needs enable teachers to build bespoke units of work by selecting activities from a number of learning strands:

Live events for schools

Aurora Orchestra is a pioneering orchestra that creates concert experiences beyond the ordinary, introducing children to music in an innovative and exciting way.

Takeaways:

• The Aurora Orchestra has made its educational resources completely free to ensure maximum reach and impact.
• The organization emphasizes the importance of integrating music education into the curriculum amidst challenges such as funding and time constraints.
• Aurora Orchestra's live programs are designed to engage children interactively, allowing them to participate in music through body percussion and singing.
• The orchestra has developed a series of resources called Aurora Classroom, which provides high-quality materials tailored for different educational stages.
• The importance of fostering creativity among teachers, particularly in primary education, is highlighted, as many teachers lack confidence in teaching music.
• Aurora Orchestra aims to expand its touring networks to reach diverse audiences and ensure music education is accessible to all children.

Chapters:

• 00:33 - Innovations in Music Education
• 07:26 - Introducing Aurora Classroom: Resources for Music Education
• 13:20 - The Transformation of Music Education Resources
• 14:31 - Funding Models for Educational Programs
• 23:07 - Breaking Down Barriers in Classical Music
• 31:58 - The Life of a Modern Musician
• 37:07 - The Importance of Music in Education

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The key is reach and for reach to really have impact, it needs to be free.

I mean you're battling not just against money but against time to get music into the curriculum and you need to kind of clear, clear the battlefield as much as you can. So we, I mean we have an amazing development team.

Nothing is easy but we have, we have fundraised now a lot for to be able to make this available for schools and we've also really developed, I mean we were always doing this anyway.

But we've really developed our live program which, which is now running alongside the resources so we can invite children inside the orchestra, we can change the layout, we can get children joining in with body percussion and vamps and singing songs with the symphony and that thing of just having musicians free from stands and flexible and responsive turning out to be really exciting.

So that's our secondary school program is, is looking at really developing that and being able to kind of reach, I don't know, three whole year groups over a day, that kind of thing.

It's seeing, seeing the thing as you know, you could go age three and you can see it right through and you know, of course we just want to be in as many places as possible so expanding those touring networks and working with local hubs and schools and that's, that's the, the kind of next plan.

I see such creativity and such, such a wide variety of being able to, to teach lots of different children and I see that, you know, that's happening in schools all over the country and I also see teachers being afraid of teaching music quite often, especially in primary schools where it can often be non specialists.

And I was really keen to look at the idea of how can you harness that amazing skill that you have in classrooms all around the country but give those people more music. So I really wanted to find a way, and we all did as an orchestra of kind of giving as many tools as possible.

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast. The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world.

Listen to teachers, parents and mentors, share how they are supporting children to live their best authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all. Today I'm delighted to be chatting to Jane Mitchell from the Aurora Orchestra.

Now introduce your pupils to orchestra music with Aurora Orchestra's award winning creative learning program.

Encompassing free digital resources for schools, training for teachers and a world class program for live activity for children and young people, Aurora Orchestra creates concert experiences beyond the ordinary and introduces children to music in an innovative and Exciting way.

Aurora Classroom has resources to support music teaching at every level from early years foundation stage to a level with adapted curricula for send learners in a variety of settings mapped against the national curriculum. Aurora are providing an ongoing musical journey which I hope can reach and support music for the next generation.

This is such an important conversation and as a musician myself, I really hope you enjoy this and it has as big as impact as I hope. Hi Jane, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Far podcast.

As a musician myself, when I had the opportunity for us to chat and talk about how orchestras are getting involved in music education and being able to have that direct link in contact with schools and that was the thing that made the difference for me in order for me to have my career. So to be able to support that from an education point of view is really exciting for me today. So, yeah, thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

So why don't we start with a little bit of background about the orchestra? First of all, for those people that may not have come across it or not used to that sort of professional musical world, is it, so to speak?

Sure.

So Aurora Orchestra, we are 20 years old this year actually, so we've been around a little while and we are an orchestra and everything we do really is about making orchestral music try and speak to as many different people as possible. So we do that in lots of different ways. A lot of the work we do is for young people.

We have a whole big set of resources which I'm sure I'm going to be talking about. But also we perform in perhaps some slightly unusual ways. We often play without music, so performing from memory.

And we do a lot of collaboration across art forms, so combining orchestral music with different kinds of storytelling. So we're really always just thinking about that question of how to make this music mean more to as many people as possible.

And I love that sort of starting point of it not looking the way that it always was from those orchestras set up sort of 100 odd years ago when you have that sort of traditional thing. We're going into a big concert hall, everyone's wearing tails and it's going to be very formal and everyone's gonna be quiet and respectful.

That kind of cross collaboration. I think maybe that's the music theater side of me sort of speaking as well.

Yeah, yeah, it was funny, isn't it, how what we accept an orchestra to look like still is based on something that's, you know, about 130 years old now and is a kind of strange Victorian ritual. And, you know, sometimes that's fun. If you want to do that, that's great.

But I think it should be okay to now say we don't have to do that or look like that all the time. And it's okay to try new things and see how different audiences react to different things. So it's. Yeah, loosening it up a bit feels important.

Absolutely. So, I mean, that takes us really nicely into kind of the educational side, which we're obviously talking about today.

Because, I mean, one of the things I've noticed is the age demographic of all of audiences and how they're coming, maybe from a background point of view, whether, you know, there's. There is in my experience, I mean, much more music going on in the private sector than there is in state schools.

So to be able to sort of bring more resources and more experience to people younger has to be a really important thing. I know my career only started because as I hit secondary school, we had to learn a musical instrument and win. Band was our kind of music lessons.

Without that, I probably wouldn't have been a musician or I'd have had to have found it from a different way. So this exposure is obviously really key.

Yeah, I mean, what an amazing thing to get when you get to a secondary school. That's because that's so often the point where it drops out. That's. Gosh, I wish. I'd love that to be always the case. Yeah. I mean, I'm the same.

In year five, someone came around to my school with the four different wind instruments and I could make a noise on the flute. And that was the local music service. And so I got flute lessons and. And now, you know, flute playing is one of my main jobs.

And, yeah, if that hadn't happened, I'd be totally the same. And actually a lot of our orchestral members are. Are in similar positions. And so, yeah, the work of the schools and the music services is. Was.

It was so amazing to have that as the route to professional playing, but also just for a lifelong kind of enjoyment of that. Of that kind of music. So, yeah, as an orchestra, we look out at our audiences and, you know, I'm constantly thinking, you know, where are the.

Where are the young people if I don't see them? Or where are the people from different backgrounds if we don't see them?

And I think it's really important we question and question these things and try and think of, well, why not? If people aren't coming, why aren't they coming?

And not, you know, and it's not really blame, but look at what we're doing and thinking, how can we, how can we help that and develop things differently to encourage more people to come? So yeah, it's a huge part of why we exist and what we're doing. Definitely.

So take us into what resources is that you've now created and how people can access them and sort of a bit of an idea of what that journey looked like.

Sure. So we've, we've created a series of resources called Aurora Classroom. So it's Aurora Orchestra, but we think of it as a, as a classroom.

It came, it was a lockdown project originally, although we always saw it as something that would outlast lockdown. But lockdown gave us the kind of opportunity to develop it and the time. I was struck by two things in lockdown.

I had children in year two and in nursery and I was struck, struck by how, I mean, watching my children go through school, just how creative and amazing teachers are in, you know, in all settings. But in primary school settings I see such creativity and such, such a wide variety of being able to, to teach lots of different children.

And I see that, you know, that's happening in schools all over the country. And I also see teachers being afraid of teaching music quite often, especially in primary schools, which can often be non specialists.

And I was really keen to look at the idea of how can you harness that amazing skill that you have in classrooms all around the country, but give those people more music. So I really wanted to find a way, and we all did as an orchestra of kind of giving as many tools as possible.

So not kind of dictating what you should do or making it a kind of big lecture about music, but just saying, look, you are brilliant, what you're doing in your nursery classroom, your earliest setting or whatever it is, that's amazing. If you want to incorporate these things, you know, go ahead.

So the, one of the main things we did was make a lot of recordings and films because it feels like what we can do as an orchestra, one very obvious thing is provide really high quality materials so that if you're playing music in a classroom it can be absolute, like kind of top quality or if you're showing a video of, of an instrumentalist or an orchestra, it can be really bespoke and made for that age group. And so we made, we've now hundreds of films and hundreds of recordings.

And you know, the other thing I was struck by when I, you know, I got more involved in with my children's Music education was how little live recorded music there was in their lives.

There's, you know, a lot of, you know, there's nothing wrong with electronic music, but I didn't hear many kind of live recorded instruments being played in, in the classroom that I was through my children. And I just thought, well, actually, that is one thing we can really do really well. So that was kind of the very kind of kernel of the idea.

And then we really thought, well, that's fine, we can do that easily. But actually, what teachers and schools need is an idea of structure and something that's incredibly easy to use.

I know that the world of resources and the world of music teaching in general can be quite overwhelming. So we worked with teachers and we worked with a brilliant web designer to try and create this world, which is as easy as possible to use.

And that can be for the specialist teacher that's wanting to find some lovely recordings and loops and vamps and something about Mozart or some piece of repertoire. But it can also be for the teacher who's like, okay, I've got to teach music today. I don't feel that confident about singing.

And then the website is designed so that you can choose at any point. I'm going to follow a video, I'm going to do it myself. And so you've got this kind of path of professional development embedded at all points.

You can choose kind of how much you want to lead or not. So there's always audio and there's. There's video. So. And it grew from there. So the first things we created were for early years and key stage one.

And then we now. We now have resources right up to a level. So, yeah, it was the beginning of a long journey which keeps going.

And I really love that you said about that kind of some teachers just being a little bit nervous about it. I certainly remember doing cpd. My specialism from that education side is drums and percussion and war music and that kind of thing.

So I'd often go in and do sort of a samba CPD session.

And one of the things that always struck me, which you mentioned there was the fact that as a teacher, just remember you've got all the skills that the musicians sometimes don't naturally have the ability to be in a classroom, understand the children, because you already know the children how that sort of educational bit works. And so if I can go into a classroom and teach children how to do this bit of samba, then you certainly can do, because I can explain it to you.

And then that sort of gets rid of that uncomfortable I don't know this bit of music because that's the easy bit, really. It's the teaching side, which you do every single day in your other subjects, which you just need to adapt.

And I think it's just crossing that barrier which then sort of opened the door for people feeling more confident.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was struck by, is. Yeah, exactly. That music is, you know, it's knowledge and it's skills which are not as kind of hard to attain as we often think they are. And.

But teaching, that's a real skill set. And the people who are doing it every day in the classroom, they've got those skills and. And you can bring music to those skills, I think.

I think, easily with the right resources and the right people giving ideas. So, yeah, that's exactly what I thought is just like, actually these people don't need us to do it for them at all. They just.

We just need to give as many tools as we can.

Yeah, the tools are key, aren't they? Because then, like, say, those with more experience can pick what they need to really support them.

And those that need even more help, they've got that structure and that sort of scaffolding to help sort of see how that's going to. That's going move forward.

Yeah.

So we know budgets are really tight within education and within music itself. So tell me how that works. How did the funding work in order to get the resources going?

How do people access it in the cost or the application in terms of people being able to use these things?

So the resources are completely free to be used now by schools, which is.

Actually, we changed our model this year as part of our 20th kind of birthday, we gave a birthday present to everyone else, which feels like the right thing to do, which was to make the resources completely free. We. When we started in lockdown, there was. There was a small subscription fee to kind of get things going. But we.

This was a complete experiment for us. And it's become so clear to us that the key is. Is reach. And for reach to really have impact, it needs to be free.

I mean, you're battling not just against money, but against time as to get music into the curriculum. And you need to kind of clear. Clear the battlefield as much as you can. So we. I mean, we have an amazing development team.

Nothing is easy, but we have. We have fundraised now a lot for. To be able to make this available for schools. And we've also really developed.

I mean, we've always doing this anyway, but we've really developed our live program, which. Which is now running alongside the resources. And that has a.

That has a very different kind of funding model, which I could talk about for a long time, but it's quite complicated. But all of that put together means the resources themselves are. Are freely available to anyone who wants to use them.

And that has resulted in like a huge kind of dissemination of them. So it's really exciting for us.

So tell me a little bit about the live model, because I think the stepping stones are really important for people to. To see and to take part. I know, like I said, I started and was just very fortunate to be in a school that gave me that opportunity to play.

But it was then, it was the continual stepping stones and pathway that opened up to me. It was the fact that my teacher then said, oh, you can then go to this music central, join this band, get the experience.

And then people a little bit further on were then performing within a county ensemble and then they went to music college and then they were in the profession and you were like, oh, that's a. That's amazing. I can. I can see myself doing that because it was in there.

And I think it's the same even if you're not going into the profess to understand it. So we're doing this music in class.

Oh, and I've seen that on a video and then I've seen that in a concert hall or in a venue somewhere where it's been live. And I like this music and I understand this music. Where can I find out more? And it's sort of joining those dots together, isn't it, really?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Because I think it's, you know, wonderful if someone takes that path through to the profession.

But taking that path through to seeing that, you know, an orchestral concert as a. As a relevant cultural event is really important as well.

And it just opens up a whole way of experiencing being a human being that might not feel so accessible otherwise. So that feels really important to provide that pathway as well as. Well, that's exactly what you're saying.

And so what we are doing is we have a number of live programs for children and we are. We are filling. Filling the path so that it. It will be. And I mean, I think it.

It already is actually, depending on the time of year, possible to go and see something whether you're zero right the way through. So we have a really developed early years program which is called Far Far Away, which has been running for about 10 years now.

So that's kind of age zero to five and we regularly appear in London and we are going to be really expanding the touring of that and also working with local hubs to get those performances to more people. So we're going into SCND schools with those performances. Performances, but also working with hubs to look at schools coming to venues.

So looking at schools who might not be as engaged as other schools to make sure we're not always reaching the same schools. So it's really about kind of working with local knowledge. So we have that for early years.

We've just developed a Key Stage 1 concert called Meet the Instruments just linked to the resources. So we're kind of working on the idea of what the resources can do is provide a term's worth of a project.

But then if there's a live event linked to that, you're kind of joining the dots again. So you're seeing actually what I'm doing in the classroom is what I'm enjoying in a concert hall is what I might think about doing on stage.

It's all kind of seeing nothing is kind of on its own.

Then we are developing Key Stage 2 discovery days linked to our Key Stage 2 units which will be more like kind of workshop days with elements of performance. And then for secondary schools, which is piloting a model now called Symphonic Sounds where we take a memorized work and a chamber orchestra.

So we're about to do Mendelssohn 4 in the autumn into a secondary school and reach really large numbers of children with a whole orchestra. But because we're memorized, we can get really immersive and flexible with that.

So we can invite children inside the orchestra, we can change the layout. We can get children joining in with body percussion and vamps and singing songs with the symphony.

And that thing of just having musicians voice free from stands and flexible and responsive is turning out to be really exciting.

So that's our secondary school program is, is looking at really developing that and being able to kind of reach, I don't know, three whole year groups over a day and that kind of thing.

So it's, it's seeing, seeing the thing as, you know, you could go age three and you can see it right through and you know, of course we just want to be in as many places as possible. So expanding those touring networks and working with local hubs and schools and that's, that's the, the kind of next plan.

Yeah, and I think having that like say working with the local knowledge so that they can see that whole journey as well.

And you know, we should say if there's Any arts council people out there and funding people and people who want to donate money, support as many people as you can for this. Because it only happens, you know, because it's not just a question of obviously supporting the orchestras. It's like if someone has.

If a school has to get a coach to a venue and that costs money and all those sorts of things. So it's not always as black and white as it costs X that there's more things in supply, teachers and that kind of thing.

So if you're in a position to be able to push this agenda and to be able to support in any way you can, then I urge you to do and to reach out to people, to find any way that you can that you can do that. And the other thing which I really loved about what you said is the kind of.

For memory, but not just from memory from a playing point of view, but because that's a very different look, feel modern way of engaging. Well, generally, I guess, with. With. With classical audiences, but also certainly with students.

If you're going into schools to see that working in a different way, as opposed to like, say the old sort of Victorian sort of looking way from before.

But I think from an educational point of view, going forward with AI, with people with critical thinking being so important and this kind of breaking out of the school sort of four walls and having to sit behind desks and that kind of thing, to see that in action in a different part of their world or their experience, in this case. Music, I think, really supports that idea that it doesn't have to look maybe the way that you perceive that it did.

And so to see that in action must be a really important thing.

Yeah, I think so. And I think it's funny playing from memory. It sounds very simple, but the more you do it, the more you realize it unlocks so much.

And actually, it still feels a bit like the tip of an iceberg at the moment.

And we're discovering that if you take, you know, if you take a sort of bunch of 50 musicians and they've got a symphony just in their heads ready to go, they can do anything. You know, you can vampire bar and get people to join in, you can start singing and they'll all know where you're going from, you can invite people.

It's just a completely different way of taking that music to people. We've done also for secondary schools, a kind of exploded version of what I described in nightclubs.

We did it at the Drum Sheds nightclub in Tottenham, where we had. We had groups of 600 secondary school children in the middle of the Firebird.

And we had a kind of a very sophisticated amplified setup so that people could be in amongst the orchestra, but large numbers and in a venue like you say you wouldn't expect. So it's really also kind of breaking down those perceptions of.

Of things maybe not, you know, not feeling that welcoming or not feeling that they might be relevant to someone. It's really saying, actually it might not be what you imagined and it's closer. It's probably closer to the music you might like than you think.

You know, it's just someone with an instrument and some notes like that is all it is. It's just these are the notes. Yeah, so. Yeah.

Yeah. And seeing it across history, isn't it? It's that kind of thing.

You know, this particular bit of literature sounded and looked like this because it was written at that time. And you can then see how that's relevant to people writing things today. And music's exactly the same. You know, this is just.

Music doesn't sound like this because that's what classical music is. It's because this particular bit of history, it was like this and it can be. Sound like this, but in a different venue.

It can be modern, but in a classical venue. And it just mixing up those sort of pre. Ideas.

Yeah, I think so. And I think feeling brave to have sort of ownership of it, like. I mean, who knows what Mozart would think, but he's.

He's not here today and actually it's amazing we're still playing his music. But we should. I mean, no, I. I'm. I've done a lot of years at sort of Royal Academy of Music and I understand the kind of.

The sort of sacredness of the score and respecting it, but also we could have a bit of fun with it. You know, it's fine to sing to a symphony or break it apart or change the instruments or like.

I just think this music needs to sort of live and breathe and I think sometimes is that it's an extension of that feeling of, you know, not being allowed to clap or all those rituals around the concert hall. We also have about the notes themselves and I think if you want to share it in a true and meaningful way, you have to also just. Yeah.

Just feel brave about being like, well, let's, let's, you know, I don't know, make up a story or add a composition or just. Yeah. Really take ownership of it, I think. And anyone can do that.

And how does that work with the people that you're working with because I guess you need to be a certain type of musician.

You need to have the sorts of things that we're talking about to want to step into that and maybe take you out of your professional comfort zone from like say that sort of traditional training and learning if you've been to music college or that kind of thing. So is that an integral part of how people sort of then work with you as opposed to the, that sort of more traditional idea?

Yeah, it is. I mean, there's a few things.

I think if you sign up to memorize a work, you're quite on board because you can't, you can't like, you can't just do that without thinking that you're up for it because it will take you hours. So as soon as someone has kind of agreed to a project, you kind of know they're up for it. You can't do that by halves.

And, but also things are changing actually.

And as we get older and a lot of players get younger, the people coming out of music colleges now, there's a real open mindedness and you know, people are still stepping out of comfort zones sometimes, but it's not so extreme actually. You know, people, people are more comfortable at trying things in front of each other.

And you know, even something like standing up is a big thing for a traditional orchestra. But actually, actually I think attitudes are shifting. On the other hand, it is something we think a lot about.

And you know, when we're running our rehearsals, we don't, we don't kind of, we think how are people going to react? We've got a real mix of people in front of us. Some people come from traditional orchestra jobs, some people are just at music college.

It's will always be a range of people. And so we really run our rehearsals sort of as in, as safe a space as possible.

So that because we are aware for some people it definitely is stepping out of comfort zones.

And an orchestral musician's comfort zone can be quite, quite small in a way because we're trained to do something so precise and so perfect all the time that asking someone to just try something can be quite frightening. So we're very aware of that.

And how did, how did that sort of work in terms of some of the, the recordings and videos and things that you've done?

Because like I say, it's one thing sat in an environment where you feel comfortable performing in that traditional sense, but to suddenly be, okay, I'm playing this instrument, I'm dressing up, I'm in a, in A studio looking very different than normal. How did that sort of work?

Yeah, this. Well, again, well, one of the things is when we ask people to do things, we try and give as much information as possible.

So some people, when they see the. The invite to come and do a project and they see the word costume and lines of text, they might. They might say that they're busy.

So again, once people. It's a lot about giving that information. Absolutely. At the kind of point of ask. Because the worst thing is to sort of.

For someone to turn up thinking they're going to kind of sit down and play a Schubert symphony and then they're given a pair of dungarees and a script. So a lot. A lot of that is the answer is clear, a clear ask. And then it's.

Again, it's about as making the ask as comfortable as possible, but also really respecting the music. I think musicians are much more willing and up for doing things when they don't feel like the music itself is being compromised. So in a.

You know, when we're doing.

Making our films about instruments, it's making sure there's a very good recording engineer, that there's time to rehearse, that the acoustics are right. And if a musician feels like actually the playing is safe, then, then. Then you can start adding some layers and asking them to have more fun with it.

But these are all the sorts of things we have to really think about carefully.

Yeah, and I think that's a really important factor, isn't it?

Because if you want to expand the experience for people, both from a performing point of view and an educational point of view, and you want to sort of bring people in, it is that sense of keeping the standards, keeping integrity of what you're doing, because we're not dumbing it down to reach more people. I think it's just a question of even.

Not necessarily reinventing, but find making it relevant and actually introducing them to something they may not have actually been introduced to. It's not just a question that people aren't interested because of what it is.

It's just a question of like, say they haven't had the opportunity, or teachers aren't trained or they don't have the resources. And so it's actually a much more straightforward step in some ways.

Yeah, definitely. It's funny, that thing about, I mean, quality, you know, it should go without saying kind of thing, but it really.

It is so easy to compromise on quality when you're kind of judging things up. So we try and really think of it as not that it's about making the music speak and it's incredible.

I remember recently we did, we did a, we have a earlier show.

One of our far far away shows is based on the Bark Goldberg Variations and we bookend the show with the aria which is the same slow movement, which is quite a brave thing to do with two and three year olds is to put a slow movement at the, at the end.

And I was, I was directing the last thing, the last production we did of it and we had the most amazing players like really world class cello, flute, harp.

And every time, you know, they would be able to have some quite unsettled audiences and they might, you know, they would need lots of games and fun and we would, you know, we'd fill the show with that.

But when we got to that aria at the end, it was more engaging to them than any of the games and any of them things and just, I don't know, I think some, you watch a two year old sort of, I think they sense the quality and the meaning. It's. It. I was so struck by that that actually it was Bach who is holding their attention in the end.

And yeah, I think what you said that sensitivity and the understanding because I think essentially music is kind of, it's a, it's a form of connection and a form of understanding that's without words and, and I don't think there's an, there is an age range to that.

There might be an intellectual age range when we talk about understanding the music constructs and structure or whatever, but in an emotional connection kind of way and a kind of a, a collective kind of way. I can, I say in some ways it seems strange, but in other ways it makes perfect sense.

Yeah, I think so.

It's almost like we sort of build up our baggage and our, you know, perceptions of it and as we get older and actually we need to sort of detox in order to get back to that kind of three year old pure, you know, it's being open minded, I guess. And I think a lot of what we're doing, it feels like we're adding layers.

But actually I think what we're trying to do is sort of just reveal the music again.

It's like don't worry about the rows of seats, don't worry about being silent, don't worry about the fact that this feels, I don't know, posh or it's associated with some, something. Do you like just, just put all that down and, and listen in this environment? And I think so I Think.

Yeah, I like to think of it as kind of reveal rather than adding.

Yeah, I think, yeah, it's really nicely put. And I think one of the things that often happens when.

When I've done some teaching is the fact that I have to explain to people from a practice point of view that the reason you do maths every day in school is because the system is they want you to be good at maths. And so by doing it every day, you have that exposure and you're getting better anyway. Even in.

Even in a school that does provide instrumental lessons, it's probably only maybe half an hour a week. And so the practice is that regular kind of point between when I'm going to see you next, for example.

But it's also explaining that it doesn't have to be sitting in this room doing this particular exercise or learning this particular piece. It's about listening to stuff that's relevant. It's about enjoying it. It's about having fun and.

And it's having all those pieces going at the same time. And almost like the child that sort of skips back to their class because it's like, this is fun. I've just had a really good time.

Yeah.

Understanding that's the same at any age. And it's like you said, as soon as you can take away some of those baggage and some of that expectation is it has to look a certain way.

I think the lightness of that opens up the freedom and the. The. The inquiry into where that might take you in. That's a really important factor for me.

Yeah, definitely. I think, because otherwise you're sort of not allowing yourself to connect with it. I think if you've just got so many ideas about it.

Yeah, exactly.

I think it's, you know, I think it's good for all of us to just question that wherever we're coming from. Yeah. We bring so many unnecessary things to different parts of culture. Yeah. We can learn from the early years a lot, I think.

Yeah, definitely.

So in terms of going forward, you sort of saying about some of your projects coming up just for people who aren't au fait with people and this particular sort of way of life, give them a little insight into. Into what your professional life looks like. Because it's different scenarios, different orchestras, different settings, the education side to the.

To the playing sides and all of that. Just interesting for people to sort of hear what the world of a musician actually looks like these days.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm a particularly strange musician, I think, but I have. I mean, I, I, I suppose, yes, maybe everyone would give that answer. I, so I, I really have two jobs.

So one is playing flute and I do freelance with orchestras.

So that, that might be going on tour for a few days or it might be sitting in the, in a, in a band and sometimes, you know, I do some depping on the West End sometimes, or it might be sitting in the BBC studios for a couple of days. So sometimes I'm doing that.

I play the flute with Aurora, which is, tends to be kind of big projects every so often and that is often a lot of memorizing as well, sometimes learning scripts. But also I'm creative director at Aurora and that involves, well, all this thinking about what we're doing and then a lot of, a lot of research.

I'm responsible for writing a lot of the scripts for the, the shows we do. So at the last 10 years at the proms, we've created a, it's like a play about the piece that will perform in the second half from memory.

And I'm the person that does all the research for that. I'm. We're putting on a new earlier show about Marla and mountains in a couple of months time.

So I'm, you know, working with a designer to put some mountains up at the moment.

We're bringing back, we just memorized the writing of Spring a few years ago and we're bringing that production back, which has a kind of first half play with video design. So, you know, I was meeting with the video designer this morning. A lot of stage plans, a lot of figuring out where musicians go on a stage.

A lot of thinking of future ideas. Yeah. So my, I mean, it's, it's a lot, but it's, it's really fun.

I feel like I'm quite lucky to have my job, but it's always that fundamental thing of how, how can we get more people to enjoy this music? Like whether it's the Rite of Spring or it's a song by Marla or whatever it is.

It's like, what, what will people enjoy about this and who are these people and how can we get more people? That's what I'm thinking every day.

Yeah.

And the reason I think this was such an important part is the fact that for people listening and even if that then sort of filters into the classroom, it's kind of what your experience of music is, might actually be different than what you think it might look like going forward.

So, for example, it might be listening and being part of a project and you enjoying music, but it might just be that your perception of what it's like to be in a music industry isn't like say putting on a set of towels and sitting in an orchestra.

It might be this creative side of what you're doing or understanding that so many of the skills that you might be really good at at school and things which you wouldn't necessarily think has a musical career or that kind of arts based focus actually could be.

So just the introduction of the music side of the experiences that you're able to provide might open up doors and experiences in a way of enjoying music and being part of your life, even if learning an instrument isn't necessarily your specialism.

Yeah.

And it definitely, I mean, I would say in the professional world people, people can be so good at so many art forms, you know, directors, lighting designers and, and still feel that music is.

The one they're scared of, is like, oh God, I can't read a score or you know, I don't, I don't know about this bit, you know, and they can be like world class designers or, you know, those things. So if you, you know, if you have some of those skills, it's like a superpower.

It's like sort of learning a secret language which, which obviously shouldn't be secret, it should be what everyone speaks.

But you know, if you, if you come out of school and you can read music and you, you know, a few Mahler symphonies, then, then that if you ever work, I don't know, in film or TV or theater or storytelling, that's going to come in handy and not, it's really, it's really like people want to know you because quite often that, that is the thing. People, people love this music but they don't, they don't feel qualified.

So if you can feel qualified, you'll find those qualifications are definitely used. It's. Yeah, definitely.

I think that's really true.

And just to sort of loop that back to like you were saying the really young people when you were doing the, the Goldberg is, is that sense of, I think at some point in your life, if music is integral to who you are, you'll have that experience where it might be when you're really young, it might be when you're a teenager and you're sitting like, oh, this is suddenly very different. And I've not actually come across this in that way.

Lean into that, step into that because it kind of will sort of show you a path that maybe you didn't know was there and actually really enjoy it. And, and then That'll be really, really key.

Yeah, I think so. And I think also combining, you know, you might be into a completely different type of music if you just.

I didn't put on a, put on the right of spring one day and, and hearing those connections and be people who know about, you know, more than one area.

I just, I think this idea of the total classical specialist, you know, it's not a bad thing but, but we really, we also need people who, who are into lots of different things, I think.

Yeah, absolutely. For sure. So obviously the acronym FIRE is really important to us here at Education on Farm.

By that we mean feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment. What is it that strikes you when you hear that?

I was thinking about this and I think I don't. This is quite a strange answer, but I'm going to say just plough on if you have an idea or a set of beliefs.

I think sometimes it just takes a while, but. So keep going is what I would say.

I think that's the main thing I've learned from Aurora is that, you know, we've been going for 20 years and actually what's happened is we've, we've just kept going and it keeps building and things will connect. But it might take, it might, it might not happen in a year or two years, but it might happen in, you know, just, just keep going.

And it all starts to, it does start to add up and also you start to realize you've, you know, you can build something if you just keep going, but things take longer than you think.

So, you know, I think that is sort of all the things resilience will lead to empowerment and you need the inspiration at beginning, but you also need to kind of, you know, learn from the feedback and don't, just, don't give up, just keep going. That's, that's always my main thing.

I think I've learned, I love that. Take the next step. That's, that's, that's all you can do. Don't get too far down.

Yeah, don't give up easily. It will all add up in the end.

Yeah, fantastic. Brilliant, Jane, thank you so much indeed.

Do tell everyone where you'd like them to go and visit to find out more about the resources and all the things that you're able to put on for them.

Yeah.

So go to the Aurora Classroom website so you can just register, but it's all free and there you can get going straight away with any resources you would like from right the way, from early years all the way through to Key Stage 5. Also send resources and you can find out all about our live shows there as well.

Amazing. We'll have links to everything in the show notes, so you can just click straight through and and get everything you need. Jane, thank you so much.

I really do appreciate your time and all your enthusiasm because as a musician and an audience member, I really love the fact that there's all this going on in the world. So, yeah, thanks so much indeed.

Thanks for having me.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.