The Newham Community Music Cluster

Lister Community School is the lead partner of the Newham Community Music Cluster, which brings together five local primary schools to share music teaching, resources and extra-curricular music activities. We are delighted to be working with Plaistow, Portway, Selwyn, Southern Road and Upton Cross primary schools to increase engagement in musical activities and bring our communities together.

The cluster is funded by a School Music Grant from the London Borough of Newham, and formalised work started in September 2019. We’ve enjoyed some fabulous in person lessons and concert days since then, and also made our lessons and performances work online. Although ‘normal’ life may be on hold, our music making most definitely is not thanks to all the brilliant teachers in the Lister Music Department and in our partner primary schools, and of course you – the students! Well done to everyone for keeping music going.

Below you will find some of the things we’ve been up to recently, and some highlights from Lockdown 1 as well. Keep scrolling to find some tutorials so everyone can keep playing at home.

Lockdown 3.0

It is tough not being at school (again…) The Lister Community Choir was back with a bang in January, and the first song could not have been more appropriate… See below! Anyone can join in with choir, whether you are in Plaistow, Stratford, West London, or even Portugal! (Yes! some of our Portuguese friends from our Sept 2019 tour join in too!) Choir is taking place every Friday. You can find out more HERE!

We are so glad to have been sharing live and pre-recorded lessons with all the primary schools right from the start of 2021 – here are a couple of pictures from our first live lesson with Year 5 students at Selwyn Primary School:

Ms Brown is also putting together a ten-minute singalong video each week for the primary schools – you can see them all here and sing along! The playlist will get longer as Ms Brown adds a new video each week… but let’s hope it doesn’t get too long:

From Lockdown 1:

It is tough not being at school and we are all missing being able to make music with our friends. So we got together virtually instead and put a little video together… who can you spot?! Thanks to everyone who took part and sent videos in – it took Mr Sinclair hours and hours to put this treat together for us!

Want to learn some new pieces? Your teachers have put together some tutorials for you! Each piece is broken down so you can learn step by step, before playing along with a backing track. There are also videos to help you look after your instrument properly – find your instrument, press play and then click on the YouTube icon in the bottom right corner of the video to be taken to the full playlist.

Need some inspiration? Check out our instrumental teachers performing some pieces at home! If you have any requests, send an email to music@lister.newham.sch.uk and tell us what you would like to hear your teachers playing!