Creativity and Music

Music is one of the expressive arts and so is easily associated with creativity. I believe that musical experiences offer children the opportunities to explore, create and represent through dynamics, musical concepts, musical technology, pitch and timer. Curriculum for Excellence Expressive Arts experience and outcomes explain that in music learners should “have rich opportunities to be creative and to experience inspiration and enjoyment” (2009, p.9). One way this can be achieved is through creating a radio play which is what we attempted during this session.

We discussed what makes a radio play and listened to an extract so that we knew where we were going. The play we used was ‘Alice in Wonderland’ which was familiar to everyone. Starting with a story we all knew, meant that we could focus on the task of creating appropriate sound effects without having to get to grips with the story as well. The play was divided into three sections and each group focused on one of the sections. Once we had decided on parts and where we should add sounds we had to come up with the type of sounds we might like and how we could create them. This was quite time consuming but we did the best we could in the time that we had. At the end of the class we recorded the play as a whole. It was exciting to hear the finished product and interesting to see the different ways the groups had used instruments and sound effects to create their desired performance.

I thoroughly enjoyed creating the radio play and will definitely use this in the future. I can see this being used further up the school where it could be used as a sequence of music lessons or used with a cross curricular topic. I feel it would be beneficial to use with a topic as it is important for the children to have a firm grasp on the story before attempting to create a radio play. The creation of the play would come near the end of the topic so that the children have an in depth knowledge of the topic to help them. I believe it would be an exciting and rewarding way to pull a topic together. The radio play can be used in many different ways depending on the ability of the class and how much time the teacher wishes to spend on it. It can be done in only a small number of music lessons similar to what we did or it could be stretched out over a term where the children write their own play to turn into a radio version. Regardless of the depths the teacher chooses to take this time must be spent discussing radio plays so that the children know exactly what they are and what makes a good or bad one. The children will also need to be familiar with the instruments available so as to aid them in their creation. The activity can be easily differentiated as the teacher can give children free reign or give the children indications of where sounds may need to be added. Both ways provide children with the opportunity to be creative and experience inspiration which in turn leads to enjoyment.   

Here is our section of the radio play:

References

Scottish Government. (2009). Curriculum for Excellence Expressive Arts experiences and outcomes. Edinburgh: Scottish Government