The Lewisham Suite 2025
In 2025 we were thrilled to be able to deliver another Lewisham Suite project, a creative composition and music-making project with local primary schools. We worked with 82 children from three local primary schools: Childeric Primary School, St James Hatcham CE Primary School and Twin Oaks Primary School and in partnership with Goldsmiths University. The project was possible thanks to funding from the Gilchrist Educational Trust and the Skinners’ Charity Foundation.
Over five weeks during the spring term 2025, we delivered twelve classroom music workshops across three schools. In these workshops pupils learnt and sang songs, enjoyed playing instruments, and explored compositional techniques through games and group work. We also introduced each school to one movement of Holst’s St Paul’s Suite, and used simple motifs from the movement to inspire our composition activities.
Over the course of four workshops, each school group composed and rehearsed their own brand new movement inspired by Holst’s. They also shared things they loved about their local area, which then became the lyrics of our Lewisham Anthem: the celebratory finale of our Lewisham Suite. This movement was redeveloped from the finale of our first project in 2022, composed by Anthem’s own Sam Poppleton in response to Holst’s final movement, The Dargason.
On 27th March we held our performance in the Great Hall at Goldsmiths. 82 local children performed their own compositions alongside five professional musicians, to an invited audience of 65 friends and family. We were all treated to a wonderful rendition of Holst’s original work, interspersed with The Lewisham Suite.
Workshops were led by Sam and supported by Dorothy and Jacob. Anthem provided industry placements for two Goldsmiths Music undergraduates as part of their Music Teaching and Outreach Skills module; Helen and Ollie joined us as workshop assistants.
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