The Festival organised a rare and rewarding opportunity for amateur choral singers to explore a variety of new choral music with renowned composer and former member of The King’s Singers, Bob Chilcott. The event was a resounding success, with over 60 participants spending the day rehearsing and performing pieces by Chilcott and Cecilia McDowall in the beautiful setting of St Andrew’s Church.

This educational project engaged with 80 primary school children from five schools, who visited local rivers and lakes to explore, observe and write about their experiences with water in the landscape. At a time when these environments are particularly vulnerable, bilingual workshop leader and lyricist Sarah Zyborska helped the children create poetry in both English and Welsh, expanding their vocabulary about nature. This was followed by music workshops with Presteigne Festival ‘Emerge’ composer Sarah Frances Jenkins, who combined the children’s musical ideas with her own songwriting skills.

The second stage of the project, held in the spring and summer of 2023, culminated in a public performance at St Andrew’s Church, Presteigne, where the children sang the resultant cantata, accompanied by professional musicians, flautist Catherine Handley and harpist Eleri Darkins. In preparation, singing sessions were held at their schools, supported by learning materials, including audio files, ensuring that future students could benefit from these songs. 

A Year 6 teacher commented on the project: ‘It is so important to provide such occasions for our children to experience. Not all children would ever attend a concert and hear live music or be afforded the opportunity to sing with others in a larger choir.’

This project was initially planned as a series of weekly events intended to reach older sections of the community and to provide social and learning interaction, centred on the visual arts. Our partners were the Bleddfa Centre and East Radnorshire Day Centre, who helped with minibus transport. The project proved extremely popular, and there was a waiting list for each session.

Artist Lois Hopwood co-ordinated a team of workshop leaders, to cover painting, spinning, ceramics and singing. One of several complete novices said ‘I hadn’t done any painting before and was delighted to discover how much I enjoyed it. I now have a new hobby!’ Thanks to generous COVID-19 resilience funding from the Community Foundation of Wales, this project was moved online during lockdown, with Lois Hopwood leading a series of weekly virtual art assignments with many of the original participants.

In October 2017, 120 children from three Mid Wales primary schools worked with storyteller Michael Harvey to create stories at the Bleddfa Centre, a restored barn and Victorian school next to an ancient village church. Each school spent a day at the Centre, where Michael led activities using the buildings, grounds and churchyard, encouraging the children to experience and describe their environment in new ways. Through storytelling and group work, the children developed their own original tales.

Schools were afforded workshop sessions, during which students were guided in analysing passages from their reading books to understand what makes a story captivating. This helped them learn how to choose engaging language and structure narratives effectively.

Each class produced a fully written up story as the basis for art and animation work, led by artist Lois Hopwood. The final art and films were showcased in an exhibition at the Bleddfa Centre during the Easter period 2018.Teachers commented that the project helped some often-withdrawn students become more communicative and engaged. One previously reserved boy revealed huge energy and aptitude for dancing and for rhythm. The project was supported by The Foyle Foundation, Hanfod Cymru and Radnor Hills.

Our 2016 cross-border education initiative saw the Festival working in partnership with Aldeburgh Music for the first time, bringing their ‘Friday Afternoons’ singing project to the Welsh Marches.

Something of an innovation, ‘Friday Afternoons’ was set up to celebrate the Britten centenary in 2013. The programme aimed to engage primary schoolchildren with contemporary music.

The Presteigne Festival extended and expanded Aldeburgh Music’s resource by employing a specialist vocal animateur to work in primary schools; the resultant performance of Jonathan Dove’s Aldeburgh Music commission ‘Seasons and Charms’ (conducted by Fiona Evans and accompanied by Susie Allan) took place on 18 November 2016 at St Andrew’s Church, with 160 children taking part. This project shared and extended the commissioning ethos of the Festival’s regular professional work with children and teachers in the local community.

The Festival’s 2014 project involved over 150 children and 20 staff from local Primary schools – workshop sessions in individual schools culminated in a work-sharing day with all the children at Presteigne Primary School in October 2014.

Workshop leader Peter Read (a Welsh writer, poet and actor whose show Dylan Thomas’ ‘Final Journey’ formed part of the 2014 Festival) worked with the children throughout, helping them to create their own ‘mad town’. With Peter’s guidance and taking Thomas’ poems as an inspiration, they created their own work, learning from the techniques, character drawing and language of ‘Under Milk Wood’ (working title ‘The Town that was Mad’) in the poet’s centenary year.

Children were helped relate to Dylan Thomas’ writing in ways they would enjoy and remember, especially in the context of the media coverage of his life and work. Feedback suggested that the project succeeded in doing that.

Together with the workshop leader, each school created an imaginary town populated by characters with quirky habits, interactions and foibles. The children then continued this work with their teachers, presenting visual art, poetry and prose at a final sharing session, when everyone gathered in Presteigne.

In 2013, the Festival’s community project ‘Unlocking Memories’ focused on engagement with senior members of the community – we worked with residents and day care patients at several local facilities. The aim was to give stimulation and pleasure to elderly people with serious care problems which, in many cases, necessitate residential nursing care or attendance at a day care centre.

Live music has long been recognised as being beneficial for individuals whose lives are affected by memory and communication challenges. Interactive sessions of the type that professional musicians Rebecca Rudge and Marcel Zidani led during the project, are carefully designed to stimulate participation.

It was evident that these encounters with live music brought great joy, and the enthusiastic participation of residents, singing and playing percussion instruments, clearly demonstrated the success these two young artists had in engaging their audience. One resident gave a solo performance of a song she had sung publicly during her 30s, and another played a piano solo and talked about her career as a music teacher. Others recounted times when they had sung with friends in schools, choirs and at social events.

‘Singing Histories’ was a cross art-form, cross-border initiative that involved a composer, musicians, a poet and children from primary schools located on both sides of the Herefordshire/Powys border. The stimulus for the project was a hugely important and influential historical event which is embedded in the cultural heritage of the Welsh Marches – the Battle of Bryn Glas at Pilleth, 22 June 1402.

In addition to literature, music and singing workshops in primary schools led by composers Liz Lane, Liz Johnson and writer David Lewis, the project had a lasting cultural legacy:

A further performance of ‘Old Stones Remember’ and ‘The Priest’s Song’, as part of the 2012 Presteigne Festival, with performers including actor Crawford Logan and the City of Canterbury Chamber Choir.

A new cantata, ‘Old Stones Remember’, music by Liz Lane, words by David Lewis, directly resulted from school workshops, with impressive input from the children themselves.

The publication of a descriptive poem, ‘The Priest’s Song’, written by David Lewis, based entirely on children’s ideas from extensive literary workshops.

Two special community performances of ‘Old Stones Remember’ at St Andrew’s Church on 12 July 2012 with a massed choir of over 160 primary schoolchildren accompanied by a quartet of professional musicians.

June 2011 saw the Festival working together with members of the senior community in the Presteigne area for the first time. Flautist Candice Hamel and harpist Ruby Aspinall gave hour-long performances at the East Radnorshire Day Centre, Knighton Hospital and care homes in Kington and Lyonshall. The musicians presented a blend of captivating new works, alongside more familiar repertoire.

Participants were encouraged to join in with the musicians and were also given a special pre-performance presentation with interesting insights into the music and the composer’s craft provided by education project leader, Liz Johnson. The duo included excerpts from Huw Watkins’ ‘Suite for Harp’, John McCabe’s ‘March Sonatina’ and David Bruce’s ‘Gigue’ for flute and harp, three works that had been previously commissioned and premiered at the Presteigne Festival.

‘Creating Landscapes’ was the Presteigne Festival’s first ever cross-arts education project which brought together composers and visual artists of international repute to create new pieces of music and art for the 2010 Presteigne Festival. The project also gave young people from primary schools in rural Herefordshire and Powys the opportunity to work with professional artists, providing valuable learning activities. The inspiration for ‘Creating Landscapes’ was the rich heritage and natural beauty of the Welsh Marches. In broad terms the project developed participants and audiences’ appreciation of the arts and local heritage, combining art and music in a unique way, enriching the cultural life of the area and bringing a wider audience to the Festival.

Children worked together with artists and composers to create their own artwork and music inspired by the rolling landscape of the Welsh Marches, exhibited as part of the 2010 Presteigne Festival, when five new wind quintet commissions were performed by the Galliard Ensemble.

The schools visited carefully selected sites, followed by workshops held before and after the 2010 Festival. The project concluded with a special community concert, where all five new commissions were presented alongside artwork and musical performances created by the children. The professionals involved with the project were composers Mark Bowden, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Cecilia McDowall, Paul Patterson and Lynne Plowman, visual artists Veronica Gibson and Ashley Davies, photographer Gareth Rees-Roberts and the Galliard Ensemble.