History project culminates in performance
CHILDREN helped celebrate Macclesfield’s musical heritage and history will a special performance.
The 30 Parkroyal Community Primary School pupils performed with the Northern Chamber Orchestra at the Heritage Centre.
It was the culmination of a six month project exploring the history of the Macclesfield Heritage Centre and the lives of the child silk workers for whom this former Sunday School was built.
The children learned about the music which former generations would have heard and played, then created their own compositions and drama in response to the histories they explored. To get more inspiration, in April some of the children had been to a Northern Chamber Orchestra rehearsal at the Heritage Centre to see the orchestra perform music from 200 years ago, 100 years ago and a contemporary piece. Then in September the children visited the Heritage Centre for a creative music and drama session to introduce the project. The Parkroyal Community Primary School workshops, funded by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, were run by NCO musician, Helen Quayle, composer Andy Smith and drama specialist, Paul Hines.
In the workshops, the children responded creatively to the inspiration of the child silk workers of two hundred years ago; what life was like for them and a range of other aspects of Macclesfield’s local history, across the past two centuries.
The workshop activities culminated in a special performance of the Parkroyal Primary School children’s music and drama composition at the first of NCO’s new series of concerts at Macclesfield Heritage Centre.
A NCO spokesman said: “After learning so much about the lives of the silk workers, the children had fun dressing up in Victorian costume and taking to the Heritage Centre’s historic stage to give a celebratory performance of their work.”