Barry Smith - Learning about Learning

We are embarking upon a cross curricular project called the Rhythm of Life to follow up last year’s hugely successful Japan project.

With my love for djembe drumming and African Music and Culture I decided that my contribution would be to try and get some drums and create a piece with some of our youngsters for performance.

I applied to Awards for All a couple of months ago and found out today that the bid has been successful. We will now be able to purchase djembe and dundun(base) drums and have a master drummer come and teach two sessions. I’m really excited at what we’ll be able to put together, so watch this space! Preston Lodge HS African Drumming group is on its way!

The ALPs programme now seems to be in a solid position as far as funding is concerned so I am very excited about that too. This was the main stumbling block in my own mind but I have had some encouraging discussions in and out of school this week which seem to have confirmed that it’s full steam ahead! We’ve had great interest from the local community police regarding the mentoring aspect of the programme as well as some interesting ideas about their possible input. It feels like we are beginning to create real partnerships with many different community organisations which has always been one of our main targets.

I also attended our Pre-vocational strategy group meeting today, things are moving along really positively for the coming year’s pre-vocational college opportunities. It is a credit to the work of Kay Affleck.

All in all a fantastic end to the week.