Everyone Matters - in schools and the wider community

Margaret is passionate about the value of music for all. Everyone Matters is her new community and education service, offering a wealth of carefully targeted, cost-effective projects using her very considerable experience in this field. Working alongside equally enthusiastic, experienced and committed musicians and collaborating closely with teachers and other professionals in the caring professions, Margaret’s aim is to bring music to people of all ages, from pre-school children in playgroups and nurseries to older people in nursing homes, day care centres and other community venues.

As Education and Community Manager of the London Mozart Players for twenty-one years Margaret set up the orchestra’s pioneering residencies and devised, managed and led a huge variety of projects including hundreds of concert-demonstrations and workshops for children and informal concerts for older people. She has worked extensively in all categories of schools for children with special needs as well as in mainstream schools, out-of-school clubs and youth clubs, often visiting some of the most deprived parts of the UK.

Never short of ideas, some of the projects of which she is most proud are those where she has brought the generations together, whether in dance or song-writing, or simply enabling young musicians to bring short performances to older people for whom life’s opportunities have narrowed. In 2006 many of the projects that Margaret had previously devised and led over a period of years were brought together when the LMP became “Orchestra in a Village” in Swavesey for an intensive week of musical activity, a major initiative created as part of the Cambridge Festival which was short-listed for a Royal Philharmonic Society award.

“Everyone Matters” was the motto of Dame Kitty Anderson, Margaret’s headteacher at North London Collegiate School and her inspiration for a lifetime. For full details please visit the Everyone Matters website.