YOUNG PEOPLE CREATING MUSIC TO PERFORM AT SURROUND SOUND PLAYLIST: COLERIDGE COMMUNITY COLLEDGE
Ahead of the students' performance of their new piece, FLOW, at Surround Sound Playlist in Ely Cathedral, Britten Sinfonia Learning & Participation producer Hattie Coupe gives insights into the work and the creative collaboration behind it.
Flow: where visual art meets music
Britten Sinfonia's spectacular Surround Sound Playlist concert format showcases both world-class musicians and young people from the East of England as part of the orchestra's pioneering Learning & Participation work. For the Ely Cathedral date on 28 October 2026, we are producing a collaboration between students from Coleridge Community College, Cambridge's famous Fitzwilliam Museum and composer and facilitator Michael Betteridge. The resulting piece, Flow, takes its inspiration from an exhibition of paintings by the artist Frank Bowling at the museum.
Into the Sublime
The project began with an inspiring visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum to explore Frank Bowling’s Into the Sublime exhibition. Guided tours and hands-on creative activities, led by the museum’s fantastic education team, introduced students to Bowling’s techniques. They experimented with tilting canvases to let paint flow naturally, using gravity to shape its direction, texture and final marks.
Inspired by these discoveries, the students began creating musical motifs and developing their own creative responses to the artworks that very same day.
In this dynamic piece, you will hear washes of chords layered with intertwining melodies, all inspired by Frank Bowling’s work. Listen out for waterfall-like melodies in the piano and strings, followed by staccato triplets in the woodwind, evoking the heavy drips and splashes of paint.
Towards the end, the music builds into a rumbling, erupting volcano, inspired by a student’s own painting. Its dramatic reds, oranges and earthy tones brought a volcanic landscape to life in the students’ imagination. The eruption gives way to an ethereal, haunting vocal line, echoing the melody heard at the beginning of the piece. It is a moment of stillness and reflection; the calm after the storm
The Creative Process
Musicians from Britten Sinfonia have thoroughly enjoyed supporting the students through weekly composition workshops in their school music room, led by Michael Betteridge.
Working together as a whole group and in smaller breakout groups, students shared ideas, experimented with musical patterns and explored melodic possibilities. Throughout the process, they demonstrated remarkable maturity, expressing their musical ideas with passion, confidence and eloquence, and showing a real understanding of musical techniques.
This creativity and enthusiasm reflect the strength of the musical culture at Coleridge Community College, fostered by the inspiring leadership of Rebecca Lewis, the department’s dedicated lead and champion of its students.
The music room has been a vibrant, buzzing creative space, brought to life by a talented and deeply engaged group of students. We wish them every success with tonight’s performance and their bright, musical futures!
Coleridge Community College perform Flow as the opening piece in the second half of Surround Sound Playlist at Ely Cathedral on 28 October 2026.
The exhibition Frank Bowling: Seeking the Sublime at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge runs until 17 January 2027.
