With Delia Derbyshire estate approval, thanks to Arts Council England support and in partnership with One Education and John Rylands library, we have now completed the pilot course of workshops in 2 primary schools in Greater Manchester as part of our Delia Derbyshire Day project.

And here are the audio outcomes..

In their evaluation, the young participants reported enjoying the course immensely – learning about Delia and making music themselves (especially the screaming bit as you can imagine). After learning that Delia produced much of her music using found sounds and tape loops, they then set about creating their own TV themes (for an imaginary TV programme) mainly using the sampler in Garageband app for ipad, found sounds (objects) and their voices. We also covered the basics of music production and mixing music. They created a project notebook where they were noting down facts and ideas – so there was also a fair bit of literacy/writing involved.

They thoroughly enjoyed the visit to the Delia Derbyshire physical archive based at John Rylands library, University of Manchester. They were very curious about the library itself and Delia’s archive asked lots of great questions.

It was so rewarding for me to work with such bright sparks who soon tapped into their wondrous imaginations. I was a bit concerned that it might be a bit abstract for them to relate to a woman producing music some 50 years ago before computers, but the outcomes hopefully express how they captured the spirit of Delia’s music.

Many cited her as an inspiration so job done really 🙂

Massive thanks to the schools, their helpful staff and radiant pupils, partners One Education and John Rylands library and Arts Council England support.