A Way Forward
Friday 13 September 2024
Artistic Director – Thomas Kemp – talks about the importance of music in community building.
Community does not really exist without music. From the football terraces to church services; nightclubs to school assemblies; pubs to concerts – music is the liquid link that brings people together and provides social cohesion through shared experience.
In a digital age, music is ubiquitous. Yet you really need to be with others in the same place to fully experience the sense of community that it can bring.
With the promise of new towns and an ambitious building programme in the UK – including repurposing of office spaces and empty shops – there has rarely been a better time to reassess the value of the arts in place setting and developing a sense of community. There are immense opportunities to create a new and comprehensive infrastructure that offers every local area access to high quality arts provision and the many documented benefits this brings.
Music@Malling is trying to point the way forward by developing audiences from scratch.
Founded in 2011, Music@Malling brings outstanding musicians into the heart of the community through concerts and outreach held in historic venues in and around West Malling, Kent. The venues include Malling Abbey – with iconic buildings ranging from 1090 through to the present day; Pilsdon – a medieval tythe barn; Ightham Mote – an 800 year old manor house and historic churches including All Saints’ Church, Tudeley – with its famed set of stained glass windows by Mark Chagall. Yet, despite this rich cultural heritage and fascinating history, there are many local pockets of rural and urban deprivation; a plethora of new housing developments with no cultural facilities and a rapidly expanding population.
Music can provide a focus and bring these seemingly disparate elements together.
Innovative programming that links time and place; local heritage; old and new has been the key to our audience development.
Concerts at Ightham Mote provide an example. Researching the history of the house, I discovered that one of the owners in the 15th century, Sir William Haute composed music and his unperformed setting of Benedicamus Domino was in a folio at The Pepys Library in Cambridge. This was transcribed and given its first modern performance in the house by the Marian Consort. The house also have connections with the Müller family: Wilhelm Müller was the poet that Schubert set in his song cycles Die Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin and there is a piano from the same period in the house by Stodart that is associated with Mendelssohn. These connections are explored in our programme through talks and concerts.
Old and new has been explored at Ightham. In 2023, Echo – an installation of five music boxes designed by Sir Anish Kapoor with music by composer, Brian Elias was enjoyed by thousands of visitors. In September 2024, Be Aware – seven reliefs by artist Ana Maria Pacheco and a new piece by composer John Woolrich will be exhibited in the Old Chapel.
Seeing and hearing something new in an ancient space – with religious heritage both catholic and protestant – enables people to imagine, explore history in a fresh way and connect them to the local area.
The Marc Chagall windows at Tudeley have been an ongoing inspiration to composer Deborah Pritchard whose music is regularly featured at Music@Malling. This has included a commission – Chagall’s Light in 2023 and a world premiere Heart of Light this September in Malling Abbey – linking local heritage to music.
Another example is Six Brandenburgs: Six Commissions which were performed by Chamber Domaine in Malling Abbey and included works linked to the local area including Stevie Wishart’s evocative Gold and Precious Silver – a companion piece to Brandenburg Six. This piece is based on plain song from the Abbey dedicated to St.Eanswythe – a 7th century Kentish princess. This project has been repeated at festivals across the UK and will feature at Wigmore Hall in Summer 2025.
These type of events have a local focus but resonate on a regional and national level. They showcase the area and bring new people into West Malling – a place that most people drive by without realising on the M20.
Underpinning this is year around outreach in nurseries; primary and secondary schools and out of school activities including side-by-side with professional ensembles; the Music@Malling scratch orchestra; young artist platform and concerts in community settings. We particularly target the areas where there is a lack of access to the arts. Every workshop culminates in a performance and this is a great way to encourage people at a grassroots level to enjoy and value the arts as a community resource – many for the first time.
In a recent piece of feedback one audience member commented: “I knew absolutely nothing about music. You have given me so much understanding with the amazing work you do. You have opened this whole world of joy for me and you are very welcome to quote me on that.”
It is increasingly a battle to fund these activities but the benefits to the local community are huge. It has given me great satisfaction to put something back into the place where I grew up. Investing in these types of activities across the country would give people a sense of community and belonging. A flagship arts policy that enabled this would be transformative. It would give people a much needed lift and provide an infrastructure that would undoubtedly fire creativity – the one thing that truly enables growth.
