Children in Bridport and its surrounding schools were rocking to the sounds of international music last week thanks to an ambitions and inspiring project coinciding with world Music Week.

Four members of Bokahalst or the One World Band gave concerts to children from the Bridport cluster of schools this week followed by workshops targeted at different age groups.

David Powell, of Burton Bradstock School, has been one of the prime movers for the project which is bringing Dorset children face to face with children and music from The Gambia, Chile and India.

He went to Loders Village Hall last week to do some digital recording of the concert to put on the project's website.

Loders head teacher Mike Kite said, "It was brilliant. They gave the whole school a performance introducing them to putting together rhythms, harmony and melody with a variety of instruments. It was very interactive with the children joining in on the rhythm and chorus lines."

Then members of the band split the school into three different age groups and helped them to analyse some of the songs and showed pupils how to change the songs which will lead into the song writing they will be involved with over the next few months, said Mr Kite.

The One World Band has been billeted in Burton Bradstock for their two-week stay.

Last week also saw the start of a series of teacher training sessions with Roger Watson from the Traditional Arts Project and singer songwriter Billy Bragg, who lives in Burton, giving hints and inspiration on the process of song writing.

Mr Powell now has two people working exclusively on putting the details of the project, including sound and video clips, on a website.

Small schools co-ordinator Sue Davies has been developing the website for the cluster schools which can be found at www.dorset-lea.org.uk/clusters/bridport and within that anyone interested in watching the music project grow can click on the heading for World Music Week.

Mr Powell said; "if people keep an eye on that they can watch the progress over the next two or three months."

Each school will be able to use the site to help solve any song writing problems they may encounter, said Mr Powell. Other pupils or teachers can add their suggestions and through that communication they can solve any problems, he said.