Faraway Tree project at St Mark's C of E Junior School

 

Spike Oatley and Rich Murphy worked with pupils from St Mark's School in Shirley, Southampton as part of Eccleston George's Creative Partnership's project at the school. With nothing prepared before hand, Spike and Rich started from scratch to produce two songs, one, 'Faraway Tree' written and perfomed by the children themselves and the other, 'Seed to a Tree' written and performed by Spike with the help of 150 Year 3 and 4 pupils. Rich provided the music theory and recording production as well as instumentation tuition and all the post production work. The kids chose to call their band 'The Treezemics'. The music workshop took place as a five day art's residency in which Spike and Rich worked all day every day with ten Year 3 and 4 students to go through the complete process of thinking up lyrics, making up tunes to go with their lyrics, recording tracks and finally producing a CD. The music project was part of a bigger Eccleston George week long residencey at St Mark's that covered Film/photgraphy and sculpture.