ALMOST 1,000 children from eight schools in the Warminster area have taken part in a virtual music project which culminated in a finale concert.

Each school delivered online workshops with music practitioner Alua Nascimento from Beat Goes On and came together for the finale event with all schools taking part.

Mrs Michal Sorga, the Warminster and Westbury Music Cluster co-ordinator, said: "We managed to bring together eight of the Warminster schools to do a joint project involving almost 1,000 children.

"The participating schools were The Avenue, Crockerton, Horningsham, The Minster School, St George's, St John's, Sutton Veny and Wylye Valley.

"Our brilliant practitioner Alua Nascimento, working on behalf of the organisation Beat Goes On, conducted 18 virtual workshops across the eight schools, with no more than 60 children in each workshop so that the sessions could be personalised for the children as much as possible.

"Then, once all of the children had had their workshop, we all came together for a big finale showcase, where Alua revisited all of the material we had learned previously and led us through a dress rehearsal of our performance and then a final performance.

"For safeguarding reasons we couldn't invite parents and carers to watch but it was definitely as close to a big concert as we were going to get this year!"

Lily, from Crockerton School said: "We loved stomping, clicking and mouth popping today," while Eddie said: "We loved to see the other children having fun like us."

Coby, in Year 6 at St Johns Church of England Primary School, said: "I like the type of music because you can do it anywhere and it sounds amazing.

"Thanks to Alua I practise every night to become as good as possible. Sometimes I perform to my family and they like it now as well because of me.

"My family love music anyway but now I have shown them a new type of music."

Mrs Sorga added: "Thank you to all of the schools for making this event a happy, purposeful and memorable one for the children and to Wiltshire Music Connect for their advice and support throughout."