Love Music Festival

Love Music Festival 2010 was a landmark festival of live music for young people, presenting a culturally diverse programme of internationally renowned musicians. The heart of the festival was a touring programme of music performances and learning events, presenting outstanding musicians of the highest calibre, alongside excellence and innovation in the interpretation and presentation of live music for young audiences.

Watch our 3 minute film about our Festival

You can watch the full length version here on Vimeo.

Read the Love Music Festival Book

The Touring Programme

The festival programme was designed to present to a very wide age group, spanning the educational spectrum from pre-school to senior secondary school students (4-18). The festival performance diary included four individually programmed days of performances and events designed for four different age groups. We presented eleven international groups and soloists. Interactive foyer and workshop events completed the unique Love Music Festival experience.

The Learning Programme

Love Music Festival was curated to excite and engage young listeners and to facilitate learning in the classroom. In 2010 we provided an extensive preparatory workshop programme devised and delivered by a team of outstanding music animateurs. The learning programme was designed to encourage curiosity and musical experimentation, helping young people to explore the diversity and range of music and cultures presented during the festival.

Comprised of creative classroom music projects, composition projects, internet and digital music projects, experiments with sonic art and teaching resources, these projects informed and excited our young audiences, providing excellent resources for school students and teachers. The learning programme provided children with the richest possible experience.

The Participation Programme – Live & Interactive Media

The festival website and the Glow schools’ intranet enabled students, teachers and festival coordinators to exchange ideas, opinions and information in the lead up to and during the performances. Together with a series of creative workshops in the schools and sound installations in the venues, this gave students the opportunity to interact with sound and music by creating their own compositions and sharing them with their peers. These interactive elements of Love Music Festival gave the participants a voice, creating a dialogue between the educators, performers, and students. The website was a portal for remote learning, downloads, listening, skill sharing and networking groups of students, performers and teachers.

Love Music Festival provided an injection of exceptional musical diversity and artistic excellence to complement the more familiar musical genres and styles that are widely available to young people, namely pop/contemporary music, classical and some traditional musics. We produced a festival that broadened the range of music made available to young people, deepened their understanding of music from other cultures, and opened up new possibilities for children to engage with international artists and their work.

Key Objectives

1. Increase Diversity – through the presentation of artists from across the world; from Canada and the USA; Central and Eastern Europe; from Asia; and Central and West Africa.

2. Encourage Musical Exploration in Education – by creating multiple access points for each performance, tailored to age groups and abilities, and linked closely to curriculum based learning.

With thanks to our funders & supporters

Love Music Festival 2010 was made possible with funding from the National Lottery through Scottish Arts Council’s Inspire Fund – now Creative Scotland. The Creative Assistant posts in the Borders and the Western Isles were funded by Creative Scotland Youth Music Initiative.

We gratefully acknowledge support from The Ernest Cook Trust & Nancie Massey Charitable Trust, and send a big thank you to Whitespace for hosting the festival website for the 10 years following the project.

Partners

The 2010 Festival could only happen as a three-way partnership between our team, the venues hosting the festival and the local education authorities within each of the geographical areas that took part. Each partner gave enormous amounts of time, energy and resources to help bring the festival to life and we thank them all for making it possible.