Minor to Major: How do the arts help enhance children’s confidence? Local children perform the Wizard of Oz with just a few days of rehearsal
Minor to Major is a bristol based company offering music and theatre clubs, workshops and courses for the children of bristol. A recent study by the national institute of health has revealed that music and theatre helps to expose children to challenges and multi-sensory experiences which enhance learning abilities and encourage cognitive development. One experience minor to major offers is a series of holiday schools including putting on full scale musical shows. Let’s follow the yellow brick road to find out more.
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00:00 Welcome to Minota Major Summer School!
00:04 Minota Major is a Bristol-based company offering music and theatre clubs,
00:09 workshops and courses for the children of Bristol.
00:13 A recent study by the National Institute of Health has revealed that music and theatre
00:19 helps to expose children to challenges and multi-sensory experiences which enhance
00:25 learning abilities and encourage cognitive development. One experience Minota Major
00:31 offers is a series of summer holiday schools, including putting on a full-scale musical show.
00:37 Let's follow the yellow brick road to find out more about this year's Wizard of Oz.
00:42 Over 60 kids come in and throughout the week we're putting on the production of the Wizard of Oz.
00:46 They all come for the first time on Monday knowing nothing and then by Thursday we try
00:53 and pull all these bits together. We do it on a nice big stage as sort of properly as we can
00:58 within a week. It's relatively chaotic but we have this amazing production at the end of it.
01:03 We've been auditioning and singing in front of people in chairs and then after that we've been
01:10 learning like how to be acting and reminding our space in the area of what we have and stuff.
01:17 Like just going through, I love all the dances and all the acting in the songs,
01:22 so I love like just practicing them with my friends, making our own little bits and I really
01:26 liked kind of just seeing the theatre and working out how it's all going to go and seeing all the
01:31 props and stuff and seeing it all like come together. The Covid-19 pandemic really highlighted
01:36 the impact of the arts, especially for children, but how does the company teach children skills
01:42 that help them transition from minors to majors? Absolutely brilliant, it's so good for well-being,
01:48 for self-esteem, for making friends and learning so many skills. I don't think people realise how
01:55 important the arts are. Sadly in some schools the arts are not promoted because it's not part of the
02:03 national curriculum and so therefore sometimes it's not considered to be an important thing.
02:09 At the start I was like okay I'm definitely not going to make this but now it's actually really
02:14 easy and I know what to do basically. It's amazing for them, I think the intensity of it
02:20 is so good that they're just completely flooded by just being involved in this and immersed in
02:25 it for a whole week. We have quite a lot of kids that come to us who are quite nervous or shy
02:30 and like within one day they're just dancing away, screaming and shouting and singing along
02:34 with the rest of them. But the children learn so much, it's so many just key skills for life,
02:41 confidence building. We have children that come to us when they first join a minor to major activity
02:48 that are really shy and you know they don't really want to do anything and they don't really
02:52 want to get involved and you see them grow and blossom in that week that they're with us and
02:57 it's just it's a joy. I feel honoured to work for minor to major.