Re:Percussion
From September 2004, the Zephaniah Trust is offering schools the chance to be part of an exciting new music project—re:percussion.
re:percussion is a drumming project, which will see Mark enabling groups of students to form a drum ensemble, by delivering lessons throughout the year.
The project focuses on the art of hand percussion and the dynamics of playing as a group. Sessions will include activities such as rhythmic games, the history of drumming, drumming in different cultures, the development of using monophonic and polyphonic textures, and combining rhythm with numeric and word patterns.
Mark will deliver ten teaching sessions to each group per term, with the vision being to bring groups to a standard where they can perform at events, as arranged by Zephaniah and the school. The pilot project for 2003/2004 saw children from Wycliffe CE Primary school play in Bradford Cathedral (twice) and in the town centre of Shipley, as well as at several internal school events. The children were seen to grow in confidence and ability to work together as the weeks went by.
From September, the lesson-time project will consist of two groups of ten children each, with both groups having weekly hour-long lessons. As the project develops, Mark will arrange the students into two groups, based on their abilities, looking forward to performances. This sees Mark in Wycliffe, Clayton CE, St Barnabas and Bowling Park. The after-school project, at St Luke’s, will consist of just one group. On the re:percussion project, children will be taught to play djembes as well as Mark can!
Currently, five schools have signed up to be part of the project. As Zephaniah is dedicated to meeting the need regardless of a school’s ability to meet the costs of running such a project, funding is always an issue. Each school will contribute what it can to the project, but Zephaniah is committed to finding the rest
As you read, applications for funding have been sent out and are being considered—please pray that the trustees will look on us favourably!