By Stephen Long
In the heart of coal mining country in the NSW Hunter Valley is a new school with a difference.
The motto of the Richard Gill School at Muswellbrook is "through music and movement let us flourish" — and it aims to prepare the sons and daughters of mining engineers and coal mine workers for a changing world.
The school is the brainchild of Richard Gill, the late Australian conductor, esteemed in the arts community, who was passionate about music and its ability to enhance broader learning and liberate the mind.
"The vision is to create a school that is really about enabling the emergence of creativity in children from the get-go," says Kim Williams, the former CEO of News Corp and Foxtel, who is the chairman of the school and was a friend of Mr Gill.
Kim Williams was a former student and long-time friend of Richard Gill.(ABC News: John Gunn)
"At the core of the curriculum is music and supervised physical activity that will really liberate the minds of these children in a way that I think is going to be very special."
Its educational philosophy is based on an extensive body of research on the capacity of music to develop the mind and enhance creativity and learning.
"Music is the subject that really does activate more neural pathways than any other human undertaking," says Mr Williams who alongside his business career is an accomplished musician and composer.
"It's been established with adults, it's been established with teenagers, it's been established with children, that music has this amazing capacity to actually activate most of the brain.
"Very few other things activate more than a portion of the brain, so it has a wonderful lateral impact on all other subjects and on your capacity to learn.
"Music manifests itself in students being able to perform much better in mathematics, much better in science, much better in languages and a variety of other things, because they have the benefit of what music does to make their brains very much more elastic and flexible and giving them a much greater capacity to listen and learn."
Why Muswellbrook?
So, how did a school such as this end up in a regional town, surrounded by coal mines and coal-fired power stations, where coal is a mainstay of the economy?
It's the result of what Mr Williams describes as a "magical meeting" between Mr Gill and the mayor of Muswellbrook, Martin Rush.
The famous composer was looking for a location for a pilot school that would embody his philosophies on music education.
The local government, aware that the economy was facing a potentially painful transition from a dependence on coal mining, was looking at how it could prepare the coming generations for an uncertain future.
"Richard Gill's vision and ours happily met," says Mr Rush.
"We need to be creating a workforce in this community that is agile, that is capable of wherever the jobs come from being able to adapt and to latch onto those jobs as they arise, but also be creating the jobs of course, too."
Richard Gill also wanted a community with "some disadvantage, undergoing an economic transition", says the mayor.
"He saw parallels with Wales," says Martin Rush, with its history of coal mining and music.
The council was relocating to the town's CBD and the mayor immediately suggested the school be established at Muswellbrook's former council premises on the outskirts.
The school building provides a visual metaphor for the transition underway.
The brand new Richard Gill school, as seen from above.(ABC News: John Gunn)
Built in the mid-1980s, its roof was fashioned in the shape of a mining drill-bit. Now, inside, is a rug illustrated with musical notes and a Steinway piano.
Full STEAM ahead
Richard Gill School opened this week with a combined kindergarten-Year 1, but hopes to expand each year and offer education that takes students right through to the end of Year 12.
Students are read a book by the principal of the Richard Gill School, Chris English.(ABC News: John Gunn)
Science, technology, engineering and maths — the important STEM subjects — will feature heavily in the curriculum, but this is not a 'STEM' school — it's a 'STEAM' school — adding the arts, through its emphasis on music, alongside the STEM disciplines.
"It's often said there is no team in STEM, but there's real team in STEAM," says Mr Williams.
"With the addition of arts we are going to see kids who are able to actually benefit from their music education in learning science, engineering and mathematics, which are pretty fundamental to a well-skilled individual in the 21st century."
There's a message here for politicians and business leaders who want the focus to be entirely on "job ready" skills: an education that fosters creativity, adaptability and lateral thinking may be the best way to prepare the workforce of the future for a changing economy and an uncertain future.
The long coal trains that make their way through Muswellbrook every eight minutes, each with a million-dollar payload, are a reminder of the future challenges the region faces, says the school chairman.
"This is a community that is going to go through an enormous transition in a relatively short period of time over the next 15 to 20 years as the world moves away from carbon-based fuels," says Mr Williams.
"I think [the school] will create a group of students who actually have the kind of adaptability and agility, because of the quality of their minds and their capacity to problem-solve and to learn, that they'll be fit-for-purpose for a world where they will probably have six or seven different jobs through the course of their lives.
"They'll have the capacity to retrain and relearn in a wide variety of other areas.
"Hopefully, some of them may even end up as musicians!"
For full article visit: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-03/richard-gill-school-combines-music-creativity-and-science/13113446