“Each being is like a grain of sand or a pebble that makes up a beautiful whole. All are unique and precious. Sometimes when I walk on the beach I look for particularly special pebbles or sea washed glass. But, in reality – they are all unique and make altogether, a wonderful beach…”
Songs for our time
From Scotland to Canada, four musicians and an artist came together during lockdown to create a song to raise funds for Medecins Sans Frontieres, to help the worlds most vulnerable people.
Lives on the line for less than £10 an hour
‘It is time to start to have a different value system. It would be a system that valued not just the outward but things that make us function well as people. No longer should the health of a society be valued by its GDP but by its GNC (Gross National Care)…’
Love in the time of COVID19
‘We will need to be the Phoenix that rises from the flames – may our plumage be kindness, astuteness, carefulness and long-sightedness. These would be golden feathers indeed.’
The tipping point
A song for Extinction Rebellion: ‘If enough of us give our voices then the pressure builds on the systems of power to take notice and accelerate change for the better.’
Music education is learning for life: Part Four
Teenagers who are absorbed in healthy “passions” tend not to be causing trouble. Abi Rooley-Towle concludes her series on music education as a skill that extends far beyond academic box-ticking
Songs of Freedom: Music education 3
Part 3 of Abi’s series on music education: ‘If the early years are the roots of the ‘musical learning tree’, then this next stage develops the all important stem, where unconscious and conscious intellectual learning begin to blend together’.
Teaching music to young children with body and soul: Part 2
We all have a voice, Abi Rooley Towle describes how children’s education can benefit by introducing song from the earliest years.
Radically rethinking music education for the 21st Century
Music education is in trouble in Scotland, music teacher Abi Rooley-Towle proposes radical rethinking to create a music curriculum fit for the 21st century