Inspiring children and young people is a key strategic driver for Orchestras Live’s programme. We believe that providing opportunities for children and young people to engage with live orchestral music for the first time, and to develop their musical skills through working with orchestras, is a vital part of how orchestras contribute to music education and break down perceived barriers to our rich artform.

We know people hear orchestral music all the time, but seeing it live is another experience entirely. Put simply, if you’ve had fun and enjoyed working with an orchestra as a child, you’re less likely to assume orchestral music isn’t for you as a grown up.

Orchestras Live works with Music Education Hubs to co-produce inspirational orchestral projects that enrich delivery of our partner Hubs’ strategic and local priorities for children and young people’s musical learning.

Our work with children and young people broadly fits into the following areas:

• First time experiences and the ‘wow’ factor of hearing a live orchestra. 
• Age-appropriate family performances to inspire and enjoy. 
• Participation projects that nurture creativity, supporting skills development and growth in confidence. 

It contributes to delivering the key National Plan for Music Education Music Hub strategic functions and Arts Council England Let’s Create strategy and investment principles.

Taking a partnership approach

Through our long-term partnership approach and combined expertise of Music Hubs and orchestra partners, we can create bespoke programmes and projects. Working in a collaborative partnership team serves to benefit all involved through providing an informal space to develop each other’s practice and the quality of our delivery. Embedding teachers in project delivery enables them to then effectively build and sustain young people’s learning.

During the pandemic, this approach enabled us to identify a specific need across many of our partner Hubs and design a programme to address this. The resulting Share Sound project was testament to the strength, trust and commitment of our Music Hub partnerships as we collectively took a step into a new world of online ensemble co-creation and music-making. If you haven’t watched the phenomenal work the young people produced, expertly supported by Music Hub tutors and orchestral musicians, do explore our Share Sound Playlist – you’re in for a treat!

Listening to and embedding young people's ideas

As a producing team, we are regularly reminded of how important it is to value young people’s voices and, within projects, to provide opportunities for them to be active decision-makers in shaping and owning their creative work.

Many of our projects explore co-creation, ensuring that the music produced is specifically suited to the needs and abilities of the groups creating it. Enabling young people to see themselves as valued ‘musicians’ with a key role to play in a project contributes to supporting them to develop their confidence to speak up and take part fully. Creating new music and exploring the world around them feeds into their personal growth, cross-curricula learning and exploration of their own musicianship.

As an art form, orchestral music can provide an exciting means for embracing different groups of people within an inclusive musical framework that values everyone’s contribution equally.

This can demonstrate musical pathways and bring together a wide range of groups from across a community in a shared musical experience. Providing these opportunities serves to enhance and reinforce regular musical learning whilst supporting the development of children and young people’s cultural capital, skills and aspiration.

These kinds of projects enable the local community to celebrate and support their young people’s musical journey. From teachers to families, seeing what their young people can achieve through taking part in orchestral projects raises the status of music, opening up possibilities and potential for those involved.

Working creatively with children and young people is a rich and rewarding part of Orchestras Live’s work. There is something incredibly special about bringing lots of young people together with an orchestra to make music, seeing individuals grow in unexpected ways and achieve more than they thought they could. Most of all though, creating and sharing music with our communities is just a whole lot of fun!

We have a wide range of project films you can explore to find out more about our work with children and young people: 

• Share Sound digital productions playlist online project with 6 Music Hub partners, 3 professional orchestras, and diverse music leaders 
• Able Orchestra (Nottinghamshire) Inclusive ensemble supporting emerging disabled musicians in partnership with a range of artists
• Encountering Wordsworth (Cumbria) Young composers project exploring poetry and place
• Leics Create – Celebration (Leicestershire) Whole Class Instrumental Teaching (WCIT) and co-composition project to enrich first-time experiences of orchestral music
• Share Sound 2 (Norfolk) Skills development project for music teachers and young musicians

• Song of the Skerne (Darlington) Secondary school creative project inspired by the local river
• We have to Move on (Suffolk) place-based heritage project exploring an archive story of migration and music