Page 40 - Final_CBSO's 100th Birthday Celebration

The plan took a leap forward a fortnight ago when Sandwell council (the local authority for the
area) approved the sale of land and buildings in which the new Shireland CBSO School will be

housed. It has also agreed to restore the Victorian gothic West Bromwich Town Hall to provide

a performance space for the school.

What will be the difference between this school (which the CBSO will run along with the

Shireland Collegiate Academy Trust) and a normal comprehensive? It’s not just that every

pupil, no matter from how poor a home, will learn a musical instrument and benefit from

masterclasses by such luminaries as Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Nicola Benedetti. Or that CBSO
musicians will get involved in making the school’s orchestras, bands and choirs the best in the

land. The project also sets out to prove a thesis: that, contrary to the narrow-minded government

thinking that has imposed the anti-arts EBacc on English state schools, music can be a catalyst

that improves overall academic achievement. “We absolutely believe that a school full of music

will enhance learning in other areas,” says Stephen Maddock, the CBSO’s chief executive.
“Evidence? Every private school in the country!”

That’s the crucial point about the CBSO and OAE projects. All publicly funded arts
organisations have education programmes, but too often they have been rendered tokenistic, if

not downright pointless, by being bolted on to a state education system that has already fatally

relegated the arts to the margins.

These two orchestras could play a pioneering role by nurturing a different sort of state school:

one that unlocks its students’ potential for creativity, and transforms aspirations and results

across all subjects. That, in turn, could not only inspire other arts organisations to get involved

in running schools, but persuade the UK’s educational establishment to reverse its irrational
distrust of the arts.

So good luck to both orchestras. Let’s just hope that when the Covid crisis finally recedes, they
are still around to make their thrilling plans a permanent reality.

Time to wake up
The government tells us that Operation Sleeping Beauty will magically produce full theatres by

Christmas. Yet in the same week it announces that social gatherings of more than six people are

banned again. It claims that Covid tests are scarce because healthy people are using them to