The month of February will see a tour of Cowal schools by Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop and Fèis Cheann Loch Goibhle.

The schools will be Dunoon Grammar School and ten Argyll Primary Schools, including Strachur, Tighnabruaich, Kilmodan, Innellan, Sandbank and Lochgoilhead and the tour will involve them in Gaelic music and storytelling.

It is rare that school recitals are arranged for our schoolchildren, but more than 700 Argyll children will be involved in this innnovative project.  The idea behind this tour is to explore our inheritance of Gaelic culture through music, song, and stories.

Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop and Fèis Cheann Loch Goibhle has already given more than two thousand five hundred  local children opportunities to play and hear music at its Schools tours, free Come and Try sessions, its regular classes at local schools, fèisean events and its concerts at community venues around Cowal and Argyll.

The success of last year’s tour was enormous, with schools and children clamouring for more. ‘Part of the difficulty is that such events fall between what is seen as a responsibility of the education departments and cultural funders”, Elizabeth Bain, the tour organizer said “ but we are pleased, on behalf of all the local children who will benefit, that Fèisean Nan Gaidheal is supporting us to tour again’.

The performers on the schools tour will be acclaimed Gaelic singer Anne Martin and clarsach player Ingrid Henderson. Their performance at Celtic Connections was reviewed as:  ‘The bards and tunesmiths of Skye have been chronicling the march of clan Donald for centuries, and in Anne Martin and Ingrid Henderson, the island’s lore is in good hands and voices, indeed’.

In the experience of the Workshop, such recitals play a vital role in the cultural life of the area, and in inspiring the next generation. ‘Over the last five years we have tried, wherever possible, to encourage parents to attend concerts with their children.  Most of our public concerts are free to schoolchildren; we vary the venues to minimise travelling time, and we have put on a series of Sunday afternoon concerts, which have been very popular with families’,  Elizabeth continued, ‘but the best way we can ensure that the culture is passed on is to go direct to the schools’.

Reporter: Mark Morpurgo

Photograph: by Derek Prescott – of musicians playing on a previous Gaelic Music Tour to Cowal schools