THE LIFETIME PROJECT 2004 - 2005
Conceived, created and administered by David Haines, this multi-stranded project's main aim was to promulgate the public understanding of the science of life and evolution through the use of song and creative activity. It involved a total of 13 primary and secondary schools, a dozen concerts, two public lectures, six artists' workshops, many songwriting workshops, and involved 500 people as performers and about 2000 people as audience members. The total budget was over £20,000 and the project received substantial funding from Awards for All and Grants for the Arts. David Haines led dozens of songwriting workshops and rehearsals with both children and adults in the course of the project.
POWERS OF TEN 1999
Dawlish Academic Council commissioned this Science Oratorio from David Haines for three performances involving 10 schools and around 400 children at Dawlish Leisure Centre to audiences totalling around 1500 people. David's sequence of songs explored the universe at many scales of magnitude from the sub-atomic to the cosmic.
DEVON ARTS IN SCHOOLS INITIATIVE
Since its inception, David has provided workshops in many schools throughout Devon on behalf of DAISI. These usually take the form of songwriting workshops for one, two or more classes in a day, with some sort of performance for the rest of the school or for parents, at the end of the day. David has also run similar workshops in many schools and colleges independently from DAISI both before and since its inception.
SCHOOL RESIDENCIES
David has had two extended school residencies:-
The first was as Gatehouse Primary School, Dawlish where he worked over a period of 18 months including 6 months where he was in residence for a full two days per week. He worked with all the 300-odd children in the school on developing singing skills, general performances skills, song-learning (everything from Tudor madrigals to pop songs) and songwriting (which led to local publication of a songbook). He also mounted productions of his own children's musicals and concerts of songs the children themselves had written.
David's second residency was at Ivybridge Community College where he wrote, rehearsed and produced from scratch a full-length musical, The Terrorthon (about a hostage crisis in an airport baggage hall) in the space of a single term; a production described by Deputy Head Alan Howson as "the best school/college production that I have ever attended."
OTHER EDUCATIONAL COMMISSIONS
David was first commissioned to write songs for schoolchildren in 1984 and 1985 when he completed two sets of Spring Songs for concerts combining special and mainstream schools at the Athenaeum Theatre, Plymouth. Five of these songs were later taken up by the BBC's Time and Tune series and used in their educational broadcasts on Radio 4 and Radio 5. More recently, David was funded by the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science to write a series of songs celebrating a primary school's science week and another series to help GCSE science students memorise essential equations.
YOUTH MUSIC THEATRE
With Hilary Hall, David formed and ran Yealmpton Youthspring (a Youth Music Theatre Company) for which he was commissioned to write four children's musicals and operas. Youthspring mounted many performances, both fully-staged and cabaret- or concert-style in its five years of existence. David later formed a similar group, Gatehouse Youthspring, which performed his existing children's works and also commissioned new work from him over a similar number of years.
PRE-SCHOOL WORK 2002 - 2003
The National Foundation for Youth Music funded David to work for a full academic year in four pre-schools and nurseries, delivering singing and performing-skill development, songwriting, music listening exercises and general music appreciation.
NATIONAL TRUST RESIDENCIES
David has worked in residence at a number of National Trust properties including Plympton Woods, Buckland Abbey and Knightshayes, delivering songwriting/performing workshops to visiting schoolchildren from all over Devon.
