6 1GT Friday September 11 2020 | the times
Time to
wake up
The government
says that Operation
Sleeping Beauty will
produce full theatres
by Christmas. Yet
in the same week
it says that social
gatherings of more
than six people are
banned. It claims
that Covid tests are
scarce because
healthy people are
using them too
much. Yet it also
suggests that the
key to getting arts
venues full again is
for healthy people
to be Covid-tested
before going inside.
Confused? Join the
club. The arts world
is baffled: pressed to
get shows on and
save thousands of
jobs, yet also told
that its plans could
be swept away
at any time by
new restrictions.
To make squaring
this circle even
remotely possible,
one problem needs
solving: insurance. If
the government said
it would pick up the
costs of cancelled
shows during a new
local or national
lockdown, venues
would feel more
confident about
reopening. Yes, the
government might
then have to pay
millions in claims.
Yet the knock-on
costs of venues
staying shut would
be even larger. On
balance, surely a
risk worth taking.A
lmost guiltily,
at a time when
performers across
the UK are
struggling to
survive, can I bring
you some good news
from the musicworld? In London and Birmingham,
two orchestras have raised their
sights above the chaos, and dared
to dream. Actually, do much more
than dream. In different ways they are
planning interventions into education
that could have revolutionary
consequences for arts organisations
and school pupils everywhere.
Because it’s happening right
now, let’s talk first about the plans
of the Orchestra of the Age of
Enlightenment (OAE). Britain’s
senior period-instrument orchestra is
moving — lock, stock and baroque
bassoons — out of its present home
(the Kings Place arts complex at
King’s Cross) and into a big north
London comprehensive school.
Incongruous though it may seem,
by the end of this month Acland
Burghley School in Tufnell Park will
house this internationally acclaimed
orchestra’s administration, library and
recording studio, while the school’s
grade II listed assembly hall — a
once-acclaimed brutalist hexagon
scheduled for restoration — will be
used for OAE rehearsals.
However, the partnership —
underwritten for the first three years
by £120,000 from the Sainsbury
family’s Linbury Trust — goes a lot
further than that. Burghley’s pupils
will have the chance to listen to
rehearsals and collaborate on artistic
projects. The first of these happens
this term, when the school’s
outstanding dance students explore
music by the 18th-century French
composer Rameau. Indeed, the
hope is that the OAE’s continuous
presence at the school’s heart will
be transformational in many ways,
not just in music.
The model is a project that
happened in Bremen, Germany, where
a similarly distinguished orchestra —
the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie
— moved into a comprehensive in a
deprived area. According to the OAE,
the project has resulted in “improved
academic performance and language
skills, reputational benefits, greater
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is to become part of a comprehensive school in Camden, north London
most economically challenged areas
in the West Midlands.
The plan took a leap forward a
fortnight ago when Sandwell council
(the local authority for the area)
approved the sale of land and
buildings in which the new Shireland
CBSO School will be housed. It has
also agreed to restore the Victorian
gothic West Bromwich Town Hall
to provide a performance space for
the school.
What will be the difference between
this school (which the CBSO will run
along with the Shireland Collegiate
Academy Trust) and a normal
comprehensive? It’s not just that every
pupil, no matter from how poor a
home, will learn a musical instrument
and benefit from masterclasses by
such luminaries as Sheku Kanneh-
Mason and Nicola Benedetti. Or that
CBSO musicians will get involved in
making the school’s orchestras, bands
and choirs the best in the land. The
project also sets out to prove a thesis:
that, contrary to the narrow-minded
government thinking that has imposed
the anti-arts EBacc on English state
schools, music can be a catalyst that
improves overall academicachievement. “We absolutely believe
that a school full of music will
enhance learning in other areas,” says
Stephen Maddock, the CBSO’s chief
executive. “Evidence? Every private
school in the country!”
That’s the crucial point about the
CBSO and OAE projects. All publicly
funded arts organisations have
education programmes, but too often
they have been rendered tokenistic,
if not downright pointless, by being
bolted on to a state education system
that has already fatally relegated the
arts to the margins.
These two orchestras could play
a pioneering role by nurturing a
different sort of state school: one that
unlocks its students’ potential for
creativity, and transforms aspirations
and results across all subjects. That,
in turn, could not only inspire other
arts organisations to get involved in
running schools, but persuade the
educational establishment to reverse
its irrational distrust of the arts.
So good luck to both orchestras.
Let’s just hope that when the Covid
crisis finally recedes, they are still
around to make their thrilling plans
a permanent reality.Music enhances
learning in other
areas. Evidence?
Private schools!
engagement with music among
pupils... and even an improvement
in the orchestra’s own playing”.
That’s important. This isn’t a
one-way benefit. Housing top
professional musicians in the youthful
hurly-burly of a school could inspire
them as much as the students.
It’s a bold move, but what’s planned
in West Bromwich, on the outskirts of
Birmingham, goes even further. Here,
the City of Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra, which celebrated its
100th birthday last weekend, is
proposing not to move into a
secondary school, but to start one —
one that will be non-selective and
non-fee-paying yet offer a “specialist
music school” level of education to
nearly 900 children in one of theRichard Morrison the arts column
Orchestras are revolutionising schools by moving in with the pupils
MARC GASCOIGNE