IOWCEP Creative Island: Our Day Will Come - Primary School Singing at Carisbrooke Castle

Last Thursday we celebrated the hopes and views of young people in primary education on the Isle of Wight at “Our Day will Come”, a school and singing event led by Southampton and Isle of Wight Music (@siowmusic) and staged at Carisbrooke Castle with @englishheritage with Isle of Wight Cultural Education Partnership ‘Creative Island’.

Around 600 pupils from 15 schools took part in the preparation and performance of the event. The Cultural Education Partnership (Under @creativeisland_iw) were proud to help fund the commissioning of five original songs by local songwriters and songwriting workshops with the pupils.

These workshops produced work that reflected how the children feel about growing up here and making plans for the future. In addition, art workshops with @new.carnival enabled pupils to express these ideas through the production of their own colourfully illustrated flags, that went onto decorate the staging area at the Castle. They asked pupils:
1) What’s your favourite thing about the Island?
2) What’s your favourite thing about school?
3) What are your hopes for the future?

A big well done to all the young people who took part and for their loved ones who came along to support.

You can view Creative Islands instagram post (which includes a video from the event) below.

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A post shared by IWCEP (@iwcep_creativeisland)

Music in Schools, Music in the CommunityHannah Buckingham23 June 2025IOWCEP, Creative Island, Carisbrooke Castle, English Heritage, Isle of Wight, New Carnival Company

Isle of Wight Future Creatives Career Week

This year SIOW Music collaborated with Creative Island and IWCEP to support and deliver as part of a Creative Careers week. Cross island 31 different cultural organisations and cross sector creatives delivered workshops across all ages/phases in 80% of schools on the island.

The music hub delivered workshop sessions reaching 180 children and young musicians from year 3 – year 11 using our youth led An Audience With Resources to highlight roles within the industry. The workshops required children and young people to design their own IOW Festival including branding, logos, ticket sales and identifying audiences and technical requirements learning about roles along the way.

Alongside the music hub sessions IOW Music College Platform One toured schools with live performances from their FE and HE musicians, talking directly to children and young people and answering questions about jobs in the music industry (led by our IOWLAB chair Andy Booth).

In the run up to this the music hub also supported the development of a new IWCEP resource creating profiles for Island born and bred creatives living and working there.

Below you can see some of the creative ideas for IOW Festival made by young people!

Isle of Wight Cultural Education Partnership put together some great videos on their Instagram, sharing snippets of each day, including activities we led on Day Three.

You can view this by clicking ‘View this post on Instagram’ below.

“The music workshop was fantastic! It was so interactive and pitched at exactly the right level for the class. They thoroughly enjoyed designing their own music festival, which was a great way to get them thinking about all the different careers in the music industry. The class (and adults) LOVED it!” (Newchurch Primary Year 6 teacher feedback).