News

Winchester Cathedral is launching a new initiative, designed to teach children about music while schools are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With many finding themselves learning and teaching from home again, the music department has produced ‘Musical Moments’, a series of videos that cover a whole range of musical topics, offering fun activities to children aged between five and ten years old. 

Starting from Monday 1st February, each weekly video will cover a new topic linked to the primary national curriculum. The videos feature contributions from the Cathedral’s own musicians, voluntary choirs and the Choristers from The Pilgrims’ School. 

The series of videos will provide stand alone lessons that bring together fun and rewarding music content that can be taught at home with no musical knowledge, or equipment required. Children can learn to play music, how to sing their favourite songs and discover different instruments in the orchestra. The first of these videos, led by Claudia Grimmell, Assistant Organist, provides a whistle stop tour of the Winchester Cathedral organ, its history and the many sounds it can make. 

Kate Downer, Choirs Officer at Winchester Cathedral said: “We are delighted to bring Musical Moments to people across the nation – we know teaching and learning from home isn’t easy, and we wanted to think of a way that we could support families and teachers alike, during these periods of lockdown.”    

As well as providing engaging musical content, the videos also promote creative well being at home, encouraging children to identify a positive moment within the video that can be added to a jar of positivity – an initiative currently being used by teachers and families across the UK to encourage children to write daily contributions of things that have made them happy. 

The Reverend Canon Andy Trenier, Precentor and Sacrist said “Winchester Cathedral’s music is internationally renowned and we’re fortunate to be able to share this in a way that supports parents to provide learning at home. The Cathedral is in a unique position to make sure children have access to and are able to use our resources, including these fun and collaborative music videos.”

The videos will be uploaded to the website each week and will be shared across Twitter and Facebook on a Monday morning. You can find out more by watching the trailer here.