Community Group: Gael Music Trust

Researchers: Jennifer Wrigley, Musician & Researcher (Independent)

Location: Orphir, Orkney

Using a composer-as-communicator model to raise awareness of climate change and sustainable practices amongst primary school children in Orkney.

 Jennifer Wrigley, Musician and researcher, working with Gael Music Trust, said:

It’s about how you communicate with the local people [...] Easy to say we’ve got funding to do this or that, but need a connection with someone you know and trust. People want to get the measure of you and need something to associate you with.

About the project

Gael Music Trust works from its base in Lanarkshire to deliver a programme of research, learning and performance activities to children and families across Scotland. The Trust used the Climate Change grant to work with award winning fiddle (or violin) tutor, composer, recording artist and researcher from Orkney, Jennifer Wrigley, to raise awareness of climate change amongst primary school children through traditional music and song.

Community-researcher partnership

The project focused on the life and work of Orcadian John Rae, who was known as "Scotland's Forgotten Arctic Explorer" as a starting point for thinking about sustainable practices within local Orcadian traditions, and to explore the children’s own relationship with the environment around them. John Rae adopted many traditional Sami practices during his time in the Arctic, something which the project considered had many parallels with sustainable practices within local Orcadian traditions. Using a composer-as-communicator model to research tunes and folk tales, they then delivered a series of workshops in Orphir Primary School, where children learned to play the tunes on tin whistles, as well as a final performance in St Magnus Cathedral.

Research impacts

 A unique dimension of the Orphir-based project was having a locally based researcher work with a third sector organisation based in Hamilton on the Scottish mainland. As a result, it was the ‘researcher’ who had an existing level of trust, reach and understanding with the community. The project has made a positive contribution by stimulating important conversations with children about the environment, consuming less and being more sustainable. The locally based researcher highlights the need to build on what has been started. 

As musician-researcher Jennifer Wrigley put it, “if you want the message to stick it’s about continually reinforcing it - sowing a little seed”.