By Claire Corrigan
The recent Music Jam Christmas Event at Columb Barracks saw dozens of music lovers visit the great hall on Saturday to hear musicians from 4 years old upwards take to the stage. As well as the performances, there were a number of artisan craft and food stalls, face painting, kids’ decoration painting and Santa dropped in for a visit.
Joan O’Connor, Coordinator of Mullingar E.Y.E., told Topic, “We’re working with music generation and school completion programmes and the Mullingar EYE project. Music Jam basically offers free music tuition to everyone in the greater Mullingar area. It’s broken into four different age categories- Tiny Jam for 4 to 6 year olds, Junior Jam up to 8 year-olds and then older young people who are split into beginners and advanced.”
Music Jam is an initiative by Music Generation Offaly/Westmeath in partnership with the Mullingar School Completion Programme and Mullingar Encouraging Youth Empowerment, where primary and post-primary students get the opportunity to learn a variety of instruments and musical genres.
The instruments and music classes on offer include guitar, singing, drums and percussion, songwriting, recording, performing and DJ’ing
Launched in 2013, Music Generation Offaly/Westmeath allows children and young people in the region to use singing as a catalyst for access to, and progress in, performance music education.
It also aims to create a foundation for this process through an inclusive, structured programme of Kodály Music Education located within pre-schools and primary schools and offers a range of choices and pathways of progression.
Offaly/Westmeath New Development Officer, Margaret Broome, told Topic how Music Generation got started “Music Generation Offaly/ Westmeath is part of Music Generation nationally which was originally funded by U2 and is now being taken over by the Department of Education and of course we just had the good news that U2 are donating extra money from their Dublin gigs. It was a fantastic day and I’m looking forward to 2016.”
Ms. Broome said that the initiative works with schools and youth projects to increase access to music education. “We’re the music side of it so we partner the Youth Work Ireland (YWI) Centre here and the School Completion Programme and we provide the instruments and tuition and pay for training of the musicians and do whatever needs to be done to make it work as well as it can. We now have four hours of music tuition that goes on in Music Jam so we start with little ones from age 4 up to age 8 and they come and they learn about pitch and rhythm and music in general.”
Music Generation has also been running FETAC Level 5 training in Sound Engineering and Music Technology in partnership with Longford Westmeath Education Training Bord (LWETB). “Mullingar Youth Café has an education programme called AMYETS which is affiliated to YWI and provides FETAC accredited training and experience to students aged 16 and over.” The initiative provides a small group work environment with an emphasis on individual progression.
Tiny Jams take place on Wednesdays at 2.30pm, Junior Jams are at 3.30pm, beginners are at 4.30pm and 5.30pm for the advanced musicians.
