"If Bridport primary school children don’t view the world as a smaller place than their parents and certainly their grandparents did, it won’t be for lack of effort from teachers, musicians and even bureaucrats in West Dorset.

Three people in particular have been working hard for several months to bring primary school children in the Bridport cluster of schools literally face to face with children in the Gambia, Chile and India.

Burton Bradstock head David Powell, Burton Bradstock resident musician Billy Bragg and his band The Blokes and Chris Huxley from Bridport Arts Centre got together to work out a way children from these different countries could explore each other’s culture, make music and create a website – and have a great time doing it.

Mr Powell said: "What started as a small idea snowballed".

Now six local schools, St Catherine’s in Bridport, Loders, Symondsbury, Powerstock, Burton Bradstock with Mountjoy and Thorner’s in Litton Cheney have pooled their individual grants of £2,000 – awarded by central government to encourage closer co-operation between staff and children – with money from Dorset Education Authority for the project.

The children have already begun work by linking with a primary school in villages in either the Gambia, India or Chile and they will be developing their IT skills to do it.

By the end of February, Roger Watson, director of the Traditional Arts Project and his band, Bokahalat, otherwise known as the One World Band, which includes musicians from the Gambia, Chile and India, will be performing for the children in each of the six schools.

Mr Powell said: "Because the band is made up of people from these countries, they have a powerful message of ‘one world’ and they are brilliant musicians. It will be really exciting. They are not very, very traditional and twee, they play leaping around sort of stuff, electronic and really fun".

Band members will also be holding workshops with the children to talk about their different cultures.

Mr Powell and Billy Bragg will be running after-school workshops with staff to focus on developing songwriting with the children.

And after the inspirational visit of the One World Band, each school will be left alone to create their own songs, which will be put together on a CD.

That CD will be on sale and the profits will be sent to the schools in the Gambia, India and Chile.

The One World Band will be back in June for World Music Week, Billy Bragg and the Blokes will be at Bridport Arts Centre all week holding workshops and the grand finale, weather permitting, will be an open-air picnic concert at Bridport Leisure Centre with the 1,200 or so children performing their own songs, with the possibility of screening video footage of music from the Gambian, Indian and Chilean schools.

Mr Powell will be employing someone full-time to work on the website, which should be up and running within the next few weeks, and students from Total Video in Bournemouth will be videoing the project.

Two villagers from Burton Bradstock, former Burton Bradstock school pupil David Linford and his dad, Tim, will be heading for the Gambia around Easter time to offer their IT expertise to the village school there.

Mr Powell said the school in Chile was already ‘on-line’ and computer literate but he was hoping to find a solution to help the Indian school with the technical side of the project."

Rene Gerryts

Bridport and Lyme Regis News (Jan 19th 2001)