Our inaugural project, "The Lewisham Suite" ran in Autumn 2022. 

Gustav Holst's St. Paul’s Suite was written 100 years ago for the St Paul’s Girls School Orchestra. In 2022, Anthem worked with Haberdashers’ Hatcham College  and  join with three primary  schools to compose a response that placed the talents and voices of pupils centre stage.

During "The Lewisham Suite", we worked with 120 pupils across four schools to compose a suite of music about Lewisham. These schools were Ashmead primary School, Francis Drake Primary School, St James Hatcham and Haberdashers' Hatcham College. Taking inspiration from Gustav Holst’s St. Paul’s Suite, we wrote a new work based on the local area and community. The Anthem team facilitated this compositional process over six weekly sessions, using Holst’s musical motifs as a starting point for creative, guided play and musical experimentation. Each school group rehearsed their own movement for the performance, and all the children are learnt our new Lewisham Anthem, set to their own words, which they will performed as a massed choir. 

The Project culminated in a massed performance at Habadashers' Hatcham College, where the children played their new compositions along with a professional String Quartet. 

It is integral to Anthem's process that the young people have creative authorship, ownership and pride in their work. We are determined to leave a lasting legacy in our communities, and we are pleased to say that we are now working as a creativity specialist for St James Hatcham and have an upcoming project with Sir Francis Drake Primary School (summer 2023). The final performance was not intended to be the end of the story, but a springboard for further musical exploration: children seeing themselves as composers and musicians; teachers developing confidence in facilitating music making; and local communities being brought together by the power of music.