We are incredibly grateful for the support of the Great Childhoods Ambition initiative from Barnsley Council that is supporting this exciting and important work, and we are thrilled that around 70 Primary Schools across Barnsley have signed up to be involved.
Barnsley Youth Choir is committed to supporting all children and young people across the town and providing access to world-class provision and an equity of opportunity for all children, irrespective of their backgrounds. BYC is a multi-award winning organisation, run by volunteers, that has developed an international reputation for excellence and is renowned for the quality of its work and the difference it makes to the lives of children and young people in our town. The choir has around 700 children and young people involved, but we hope that this additional support will reach many thousands of children across the town. As a registered charity we rely on the support of partners and sponsors to deliver this work and we hope that it makes a difference to children both within and outside the organisation.
The project provides some fantastic resources curated and provided within this booklet with supporting professionally recorded videos and audio tracks. It has been created to provide a lasting impact beyond in-person workshops that we will also provide for schools. We hope that all teachers, including non- specialists, find the resources useful and feel empowered to use them. Aside from demonstrating use of them in the 2 workshops we are offering all schools, we are also keen to develop meaningful relationships and offer further support in any way that we can. We’ve designed resources that we hope all teachers feel confident in using, irrespective of their musical experience and confidence.
Our Singing Champions, Eleanor and Luke, have prepared some wonderful warm-ups, games and songs and shared them in this resource. The focus on the sessions will be fun and engagement in singing and the materials should provide some excellent learning opportunities for children at both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. We hope that the resources will be easily accessible for teachers/support staff. Each song has its own lyrics page and music sheets, and teachers can click on the icon from the page to access a backing track and a vocal track. The songs can be used in classrooms, in assemblies and also used by school choirs.
All resources, rehearsal and performance audio tracks and videos as well as a workshop for KS1 and for KS2 are provided free of charge to schools. We hope that they will provide support for the excellent work that already takes place in schools and we hope that teachers and children have lots of fun using them.
Thank you once again to the Great Childhoods Ambition for the support that enables us to provide this support, and to schools for engaging with us. Please get in touch if we can support any further.
Mat Wright
Artistic Director
