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WINSTON CHURCHILL MEMORIAL TRUST: TRAVELLING FELLOWSHIPS
Report from Sally Chappell (from BKA Summer 2005 Newsletter).

The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (WCMT) each year offers approximately 100 citizens of the UK the opportunity to travel abroad, visiting different countries and cultures on Travelling Fellowships. This is on the understanding that the skills and knowledge gathered are brought back and shared within one’s professional community. The different categories – which change from year to year and can range from such diverse areas as Juvenile Crime to Canoeing – are published each June. A musical category appears fairly regularly, however recently these have been vocally or chorally based and no good for someone whose prime interest is instrumental music!

As someone who is quite passionate about the value of both singing and musicianship training before children get anywhere close to an instrument, for some time I have been keen to develop further my ideas about the brain and musicianship*. Ideally I wanted to broaden my experience of the different ways that children learn music and have the opportunity to assess the impact that different approaches make to the development of children’s musical skills and abilities.

The 2005 category of ‘Music for the Young’ seemed perfect! After some hesitation about whether to apply for it or not and some last minute burning of the midnight oil, my application was sent off in early November. To cut a long story short, to be shortlisted, interviewed and in February offered a Travelling Fellowship was, and still is, quite amazing. And that’s without even doing the travelling!

My project is An Aural Approach to Instrumental Learning and over the course of the next six months I am going to be travelling to South Africa, Hungary and Cuba. My rationale for choosing these three countries is that in each of them music is still part of the culture and is integral to life. Children are born into music and are brought up with it all around them. My aim is to try and assess the difference that this ‘sound before the symbol’ approach has on the motivation, enjoyment and musicianship of young players.

In South Africa I shall be visiting the Soweto String Project and looking at various outreach programmes that are running around Pretoria and Cape Town. Any study of this nature would not be complete without a visit to Hungary and its amazing approach to music education. At the time of writing I am still in the process of planning my visit there. The final journey of my fellowship will be to Cuba (over Christmas!), where I am hoping to experience some serious Latin American music making and I am looking forward to seeing how the link between classical, jazz and folk music works.

Having returned from all these trips I shall then be assessing my findings and submitting a report to the Churchill Trust. I also hope to develop a more ear-led approach to instrumental teaching for use back in the UK and I shall certainly let everyone at the BKA know more about more my adventures on my return.

I consider myself very privileged and fortunate to have been made a 2005 Churchill Fellow. For anyone out there whose curiosity has been aroused by this, the 2006 categories will be announced in early June 2005 and can be found on www.wcmt.org.uk. It truly is ‘the chance of a lifetime’.

*See Chappell. S (1999). Developing the Complete Pianist: A whole-brained approach to piano teaching. British Journal of Music Education, 16:3, 253 - 62.