Music for Youth Regional Festival

This new Stephen Perse initiative is in partnership with the national festival series Music For Youth. Before the pandemic, Dame Bradbury's Senior Choir participated in the London Music For Youth Festival and completely relished the opportunity to perform and listen to other schools perform, and to receive feedback from the fantastic Music For Youth Mentors. It, therefore, made perfect sense to set up our own choral and instrumental Music For Youth Festival for Cambridgeshire schools as a way of bringing together schools from our locality and further afield to share in the joy of music making. 

On the day we heard some exquisite performances from the Cambridge Steiner School; Millfield Primary; Ridgefield Primary; and ACES Primary Trust. We were also delighted to listen to Chesterton Community College's Year 7 and 8 Choir; and Comberton Village College's Jazz Band. In the second half, we heard from the wonderful Kings Hedges Educational Federation choir, followed by Fitzwilliam and Dame Bradbury's choirs. The event was hugely aspirational with a range of age groups involved from Year 3 all the way up to Year 13. It was fantastic for the younger children to experience the high quality secondary school performances, showing them what they could go on to achieve in the future. 

Our Music For Youth Mentor, Andy Grappy (a renowned professional musician, working with some of London's top choirs and orchestras) read aloud his constructive feedback for every group, and each school was awarded a Music For Youth certificate.

We are so thankful to the visiting schools for sharing with us in this historic musical event for Cambridge. It was clear from every school's introductory paragraph that performance opportunities for groups have certainly taken a 'hit' as a result of the pandemic. It was, therefore, heart-warming to see children beaming with pride and confidence on stage as they performed with their school and supported each other. It is certainly a global mission to reignite the performing arts sector and we are glad to have been a small part of this movement at Stephen Perse.

We look forward to maintaining strong connections with all of the participating schools and hopefully seeing them again next year for another Music For Youth Festival! 

Laura Mullaly, Head of Music and Performing Arts