CHILDREN FROM Limerick’s regeneration areas made music yesterday with some of the most talented performers in the country.
Music Factory, the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s annual outreach programme, concluded yesterday with Peter’s Prequels, performed for their friends and family at the orchestra’s new €3 million recording studio at the University of Limerick.
The week-long creative music project was run in conjunction with the MBNA Shannon International Music Festival, which this year saw extra funding allocated to allow the Music Factory to expand into the regeneration areas of Limerick city.
Fifty schoolchildren, including 25 pupils from Moyross and Southill aged between eight and 11, took part in the five-day programme, which was themed around the music and characters of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.
Diane Daly, violinist with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, led the exciting project, which saw children given simple instruments to play in the orchestra.
According to John Kelly, chief executive of the orchestra, the programme helps children to develop their creative and imaginative skills, which he believes can be achieved, irrespective of social background.
“Everyone is a prisoner of their own environment, whether they are from a middle, upper or working-class background,” Mr Kelly said.
“The programme aims to inspire children to have a far greater vision of their own potential that is not controlled by the environment they grow up in.
“The environment a child lives in doesn’t define its potential and this project helps children develop inventive skills where they begin to discover software within themselves that they didn’t even know existed,” he added.