Foundation

The Johnny Mars Foundation

Johnny Mars is committed to offering an educational tool within the classroom to allow young minds to explore, build relationships and confidence, develop a love of music and bring young people together.

The Johnny Mars Foundation wishes to work with young people and use their creativity to compose an anthem celebrating what is special and what they like about their school.

The Johnny Mars Foundation aims to; create school anthems, achieve total pupil involvement, give motivation through music, inspire young musicians to give professional performances and, by playing alongside a professional musician, to encourage young bands to bring out their star quality and learn how to perform on stage and lead a band.

The compostion process requires the development of a number of skills for the children to engage. Literacy is at the heart of the mission, which draws on their ability to construct cohesive sentences that will develop into lyrics. In addition sessions employ use of rhyme, syllabic understanding, song construction, empathy, sharing ideas, collaboration, team-work plus other life building proficiencies.

Students are encouraged to improvise either vocally or using whatever musical resources there might be available. The resultant themes are then adapted and refined so that the marriage of music and libretto is achieved.

Seeing the growth of self-esteem in children, through their participation in such a relatively short time scale, is inspirational and the driving reason for our desire to expand.

Our experience shows that this project works and the end product, which has a life span of many years, can be learnt and enjoyed by the whole school.