On August 7th 2026, a group of children aged 10 – 13 came together for Arts Active’s first ever Junior Composers course. Junior Composers is a new branch of Young Composers; a course for 14 –18 year olds, which Arts Active has provided since 2014. The course was created in response to a high level of demand for a version of Young Composers for younger children.
The course took place at Chapter Arts Centre and was led by professional composer and gamelan specialist, Helen Woods. Students were introduced to gamelan instruments and learned to play a traditional Javanese gangsaran, before taking part in a group exercise to create music. This was followed by an exercise to come up with a title for a new composition to be worked on. The resulting title was Flamboyant, Red-Hot, Pink Lego! The group was then split into three smaller groups, each tasked with creating either the start, middle, or end of the piece. Everyone then came back together to work on slotting the three sections together and workshopping them into a final piece. At the end of the day, the piece was performed to the children’s parents and recorded. Helen later edited the recording and it was sent out to the children to listen to.
The children described the course as ‘educational’, ‘pretty good’, ‘fun’ and ‘exciting’ and made the following comments:
“I learnt a lot in just five hours.”
“I would do it every day.”
“I loved the session, the people were super nice and the instruments are very fun!!”
Find out more about Arts Active’s gamelan programme here.
