The Glasshouse

A Both the Youth and Junior Summer Schools include a mixture of group teaching and instrumental sectionals and the workshops will all be tailored to the young people who sign up.

The Youth Summer School will include several instrumental sectionals – depending on the numbers and mixture of instruments the young people who join us play, this might be specific instruments (e.g. fiddles, flutes, guitars, melodeons) or instrument groups (e.g. bowed strings, winds, strummed strings, boxes). There will also be the chance for the young people to work together in small groups on creative activities and arranging.

The Junior Summer School will include more time in larger mixed instrument groups, but there will still be a few instrumental sectionals to focus on specific techniques or ideas (e.g. bowed strings, winds, singers).

For both Youth and Junior, there will also be lots of singing for the whole group, as well as lots of dancing.

A Starting with breakfast for residential musicians (and registration for non-residential musicians), the group will do a warm up to start our day or music making. We’ll then go into our first workshop; which might be learning a new tune or song. After a break, we’ll have another workshop; this might be continuing work on our new repertoire and adding some arrangement ideas, or it might be a smaller group sectional where we focus on some specific techniques. After lunch, there will be a non-musical activity led by the pastoral team, such as going for a walk or playing some games, followed by more music workshops. Then we have dinner, followed by an evening activity, such as a tutor concert or a dance. There’ll be some time for playing tunes with each other, as well as chill time or some games throughout the day. After that, it’ll be time for bed to get a good night’s sleep before more musical fun the next day!

The Summer Schools are such a welcoming place for young musicians to come and meet each other and make new friends. Any worries beforehand are totally understandable but our fantastic pastoral team, along with our brilliant tutors, make the young peoples’ well-being, enjoyment, and comfort at the Summer School the absolute priority. We’ll be doing lots of games and activities to help break the ice when we all meet, we’ll ensure that everyone is included, and staff are always there to talk to about any concerns through the week.

The bedrooms tend to be arranged in 2s, 3s and 4s and our pastoral team will allocate people to rooms based on what they think will be a good fit. Any specific requests about room sharing will always be considered. Students will be separated by age group (Youth/ Junior) and gender, and each group will have their own toilets and showering facilities The rooms themselves are basic but comfortable. All bedding is provided but you will need to bring your own towel.

Young people must already be comfortable playing their instrument/singing (we can’t cater for complete beginners), but don’t need to have played folk music before (your experience can be from any style of music). An example of being comfortable playing is being able to happily play some initial scales (e.g. D major, G major, A major), and being happy playing a few folk tunes/songs or pieces from another musical style.

No young people do not need to be able to read music, we will mainly be learning by ear. Don’t worry if this is something you’ve never done before – our tutors are very experienced in supporting learning by ear, with teaching methods to make this way of learning accessible to people for the first time.

We don’t plan to send out musical material in advance but do feel free to get in touch if this is a concern and we can support where possible. Our tutors are experts at supporting young musicians in their learning and will be there to help with all the new music they meet during the course.

Yes, there will be an informal sharing concert at the school for family to come along to before we say goodbye on Friday afternoon.

The venue is not wholly accessible unfortunately. If your child has any access needs, please get in touch to discuss further.

There is a good choice of food at meal times and all diets and allergies are catered for – there’s an opportunity to tell us more specifics about what your child needs on a further information form that is sent out after the initial application form has been received.
In addition to the main meals, we also provide a range of snacks during break times.

There is limited parking at the venue but plenty of metered street parking nearby.

Yes, there are lots of breaks throughout the Summer Schools, including non-musical activities led by the pastoral team, short breaks between workshops, and other time away from music making where everyone can play some games or have chill time. All of the free time is supervised by the pastoral team.