Mayfield School students have been making music with local musicians to celebrate Great Big Green Week.
Singer songwriter Emma Dockeray and director Dave Roberts of Cumbrian music charity Soundwave, worked with the students to write Believe, a song about the sea and needing to do more to save the planet.
Great Big Green Week is a celebration of action on climate change and takes place across the whole of the UK in June.
Emma and the students started writing the song together during a visit to Rosehill Theatre, which formed part of a creative careers project the students are involved in, run by Centre for Leadership Performance.
The songwriting session was arranged by Oh My Days Promotions – a low carbon event and media service founded by Tom Salmon – that aims to use low-carbon ways to showcase the talent of Cumbrian musicians.
Tom also filmed the session and previewed it at the theatre using a solar-charged generator to power the TV showing the final footage.
He said: “Most students in the session hadn’t taken part in a song-writing activity before, which was hard to believe because their lyrics and teamwork were really impressive.
“For the future, I hope it’s helped the students discover a new, creative way of expressing what’s important to them.
“It was important to give young people the chance to work with a skilled musician from their area, so they know how much creative talent is on their doorstep.
“It’s a joy knowing the students now have a new meaningful song out in the world, which they can enjoy and share with friends and family.”
The preview was then followed by a live debut performance at The Harbour Sessions, one of several monthly music events hosted by Oh My Days for the Whitehaven Harbour Commissioners.
Nicola Woolley, the secondary programme manager at Centre for Leadership Performance, who worked with the Mayfield students on the creative careers project, said the students had been inspired by the session.
She added: “Working with Oh my Days and the team at Soundwave was a fantastic addition to our recent ProjXArts work awareness programme with students from Mayfield School. It has been a brilliant example of true collaboration on a project.
“The songwriting session arranged by Tom really inspired the young people’s creativity and raised aspirations as all the group were able to contribute to the process. We can’t thank Tom, Emma and Dave enough for supporting our young people and the ProjXArts Programme.”
All of Oh My Days’ gigs use a solar-charged PA system where the camera, system and sound mixer all use batteries which are charged by a solar-powered generator.
The event and media service was funded by Cumberland Council and is part of the Zero Carbon Cumbria partnership’s emission reduction programme aiming to make Cumbria carbon neutral by 2037.
