Music Journalism Workshop at Nottingham Royal Concert Hall

Following news of our Rockhaq Academy programme with Nottinghamshire Music Hub, here’s an update on how our workshops and events are going so far. We’ve been working with Year 10 music students from Tuxford Academy in Newark and on Friday (December 1), we all met for a special live music journalism workshop at Nottingham Royal Concert Hall.

Our workshop took place just before the John Wilson Orchestra were set to perform various MGM musical classics such as Singin’ In The Rain. Tuxford Academy students stayed to enjoy the show and apply their new ‘music journalism’ knowledge to their live reviews of the John Wilson Orchestra’s performance.

Rockhaq Community Founder Michelle Dhillon overcame various technical difficulties to deliver a unique 2-hour Rockhaq Live Reviews workshop focusing on Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy of Gold. Big thanks to Community Member Mark Wong for providing the inspiration for this! We decided to go for a very different approach and look at Mark’s review, then following with – hover over our bullet points to watch the videos:

Michelle led discussions and critical analysis of each performance of the song, so students wrote 3 mini reviews after watching each video. All students took into account key principles of writing a Live Review and writing a standard Music Review. To kick off our music journalism workshop at Nottingham Royal Concert Hall, we gave students some great examples of Live Reviews on The Rockhaq Community. These included Sam Brookes’ live review of the Rock Sound Tour/Your Demise at Nottingham Rock City and Khia Bianca’s review of Drake at Nottingham Arena. Check them out and show some love!

We look forward to seeing what work Tuxford Academy students produce from our Live Reviews workshop and hearing their feedback throughout the Rockhaq Academy programme. So far it’s been positive. We’re also impressed with the level of dedication and genuine interest and engagement the students have shown. Thanks to the valuable input so far from their Music teacher Gary Haynes and Music co-ordinator Alan on December 1.

If you have any questions about our Rockhaq Academy programme or want to know how you can get involved, please contact us. Roll on 2018!