Page 39 - Final_CBSO's 100th Birthday Celebration

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is to move into a comprehensive school in Camden, north London

However, the partnership — underwritten for the first three years by £120,000 from the

Sainsbury family’s Linbury Trust — goes a lot further than that. Burghley’s pupils will have the
chance to listen to rehearsals and collaborate on artistic projects. The first of these happens this

term, when the school’s outstanding dance students explore music by the 18th-century French

composer Rameau. Indeed, the hope is that the OAE’s continuous presence at the school’s heart

will be transformational in many ways, not just in music.

The model is a project that happened in Bremen, Germany, where a similarly distinguished

orchestra — the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie — moved into a comprehensive in a deprived

area. According to the OAE, the project has resulted in “improved academic performance and

language skills, reputational benefits, greater engagement with music among pupils . . . and even
an improvement in the orchestra’s own playing”.

That’s important. This isn’t a one-way benefit. Housing top professional musicians in the

youthful hurly-burly of a school could inspire them as much as the students.

It’s a bold move, but what’s planned in West Bromwich, on the outskirts of Birmingham, goes

even further. Here, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which celebrated its 100th

birthday last weekend, is proposing not to move into a secondary school, but to start one — one

that will be non-selective and non-fee-paying yet offer a “specialist music school” level of

education to nearly 900 children in one of the most economically challenged areas in the West

Midlands.