Life in Cornwall, where beauty meets remoteness.
Nestled in scenic landscapes, Cornwall's remote areas offer a unique lifestyle, but accessing specific educational resources, like music education, presents challenges. In Cornwall's remote corners, aspiring musicians face significant obstacles due to limited access to resources, diverse experiences, and the struggle to form musical communities.
Music education is pivotal in holistic development, nurturing creativity, discipline, and cognitive skills crucial for a child's growth, so we endeavour to provide music education in every corner of the county. Through CMST, more music instructors and proper facilities are available to ensure students can access quality music education.
School-based music services, like CMST, provide a well-rounded music education and a broad spectrum of musical experiences. Innovative approaches like online lessons, outreach programs, hubs, and having a large number of music teachers dispersed around the county help to break down these geographical barriers, allowing access to even the most remote students.
Geographical remoteness can often lead to a lack of exposure to various musical genres and opportunities for students to broaden their musical horizons. This, coupled with sparse populations, can make finding peers to collaborate in music-making or group performances easier. We make use of ensembles and hubs in our most remote locations to enable these students to overcome these obstacles and interact with their peers. Being part of the larger CMST community allows the students to be involved in projects with local musicians and organisations to enrich students' experiences through mentorship, workshops, and performance opportunities.
In extremely remote areas with small schools, we make use of centralised music hubs that can provide access to instruments, instructors, and spaces for performances. Fostering a musical community and establishing networks and partnerships to bring qualified music instructors to these otherwise inaccessible areas, ensuring quality education for aspiring musicians.
One such area is the Lizard, a vast beauty surrounded by rivers and outstanding ocean views. Our teachers have been working hard to unite the community using a music hub in Helston, which houses our amazing ensemble, Tros An Hellys. This group is composed of young musicians from a wide range of instrumental families and abilities who meet weekly in Helston to perform together and learn. The nature of this group means that no matter what your instrument is or if you live on the Lizard Point or Coverack Cove, there is an ensemble you can join. They have had a range of exciting performance opportunities and continue to grow year after year, making this one of our most successful outreach programs in the County.
There are as many downsides to living in rural Cornwall as there are positives. Still, with the help of our amazing network of music teachers, we are helping to make sure that the music isn’t lost in these beautiful stretches of countryside.