The Southend Jazz Festival is working with Rhythm Connections to deliver fully funded music workshops to 2,000 primary school children across Southend-on-Sea as part of its 2026 programme, with backing from Ronnie Scott’s Charitable Foundation for 2025, 2026 and 2027 and an invitation for participants to perform at the festival’s Primary School Workshops event on 12 October 2026, organised through the Southend Jazz Festival.
The fully inclusive sessions focus on percussion and explore African music traditions and their links to jazz, with activities progressing through year groups from African drumming in Year 3 to improvisation in Year 5 and more advanced drumming in Year 6. Rhythm Connections delivers a variety of workshop types including African drumming, Boomwhackers and improvisation, tailored so pupils build skills year on year and have the chance to join a live performance at the festival.
The programme is funded by Ronnie Scott’s Charitable Foundation, a non-profit set up in December 2015 to support jazz and music education in the UK, charity number 1163990, and the funding commitment covers the 2025, 2026 and 2027 school years. The festival says the aim is to give in-school music workshop access to 2,000 children and to allow those pupils to be part of the 2026 Southend Jazz Festival, while the workshops are delivered by Southend Jazz Festival CIC in partnership with Rhythm Connections.
Parents and schools interested in taking part are asked to contact the festival at [email protected] to express interest and arrange sessions. The organisers say the scheme is designed to widen access to live music and classroom music-making, and to give pupils a practical route into performance as part of the town’s annual jazz week.
About this article: This story was put together with the help of AI tools and checked by a real person on our team. We're a small crew trying to cover as much of the UK as we can on a limited budget. We're getting better every day - but we're not perfect yet. If something looks off, let us know. You're part of the process.
