Performing arts vital to the young

INVOLVEMENT in the arts as a child and teenager is life enhancing, life changing. We know that already. It is about more than the music or the play or the dance. We know performing teaches young people about teamwork and enhances selfesteem. Playing in an orchestra instils discipline and the understanding that a part is as important as a whole.

Dance is similarly discipline, health and self-expression. There’s time keeping, responsibility, stress relief, cultural understanding, concentration and perseverance.

There is no downside to a young person taking part in the arts, only the opportunity for physical and mental growth that will stand them in good stead for a lifetime.

Yet Scottish Youth Theatre is on the knife edge of closure. Stirling Council threatened the Big Noise Raploch. Councils are increasing the cost of school music tuition.

I was an extremely compliant child. At primary school I learned the tenor horn because the tenor horn was the only spare instrument the school had to loan.

The other two girls in my little band of junior musicians played the cornet. How, oh how, I wished I could play the cornet. How light it looked to carry, how dulcet its tones.

“Honk,” I wistfully sounded on my horn. But secondary school was the opportunity for a fresh start. Surely they would have an abundance of cornets to loan at the big school. Off I trotted to the music department. “I would like to learn the cornet.”

“You mean the clarinet,” came the reply. I had never heard of such a thing. The teacher brought something ludicrous, in many parts, from a small box. It was decidedly

After years of tutelage from Betty Pearson, my school’s firebrand head of music, I would never let anyone deny me a cornet again

not a cornet. I was crushed. Twenty years later I still play the clarinet.

You’ll note that nowhere did the thought cross my mind that one might purchase a musical instrument. So, let me be open about my bias: free music tuition in schools is for the likes of me. Kids like me who otherwise would not have been able to learn an instrument.

I also played the tenor saxophone (borrowed) and percussion (borrowed) in school bands and local authority bands. How to explain the impact music had and has on my life, when it seems so self-explanatory. Certainly, after years of tutelage from the Lanarkshire legend Betty Pearson, my school’s head of music and firebrand, I would never let anyone deny me a cornet again.

There has been a nationwide howl against the threat to Scottish Youth Theatre. In a neat demonstration of just why it is so important, powerful, confident voices have spoken out in its favour – powerful, confident voices developed in Scottish Youth Theatre.

Nicola Sturgeon has said that, in the face of the potentially fatal funding cut from Creative Scotland, the Scottish Government will see what it can do.

Similarly, the cry of angst at the threat to Big Noise Raploch – one of a truly life-changing orchestra programme that runs in our most deprived communities – was enough to make Stirling Council think again.

We thought the benefits of the arts were so obvious as to be sacrosanct and this is why there is such shock. Suddenly the big name organisations are in peril and we must speak out.

We too must keep a watchful eye on the state of music tuition in schools. It is less visible than the wellpublicised arts organisations, it has less clout, but if it disappears then the arts will become the preserve of the middle classes and private schools.

All children deserve equal access to the aesthetic, academic and artistic benefits of performing arts. They will become better citizens for it and we will have a better society. That is worth every penny.