Musical Futures comes to my hometown

It was a long time in the planning, but on Friday 3rd July 2026 I was able to realise the long-term ambition of bringing a Musical Futures International workshop to Palmerston North.

I’ve been inspired and driven by Musical Futures for a number of years now, having attended three workshops in Auckland as well as their Big Gigs in Bangkok and Bali. Everything from the underlying pedagogy through to the constantly updated and refreshed online music resources sits so well with the way that I run my programmes here at Monrad/Tirohanga.

I can clearly remember leaving my first Auckland workshop in 2018 thinking that:

A) it was the best PD I’d ever done.

B) it was going to change just about everything in my music programme, starting next Monday.

It’s not easy to put together an event like this, especially in provincial New Zealand, and it took a leap of faith from the Musical Futures team to make it actually happen.

As they were travelling from overseas, we had to be absolutely sure that we had a programme on offer that would attract registrations from around the region and beyond, and that it was something people would be genuinely interested in taking part in.

Timing was another matter. Although I initially thought that the final day of term would be a perfect day to run a course, it ended up ruling a number of teachers out due to other commitments on that day/week.

However, we did get the numbers I had hoped for in the end, and the feedback since has been wonderful.

For starters, like everything in the MF pedagogy, this was hands-on practical experience. We spent the day exploring, re-creating and ultimately creating music, just like we want to see our students do.

No “Death by PowerPoint” lectures here. It’s just a case of: here’s the resource, here’s the framework, grab an instrument and let’s try it out together.

A highlight for me was getting to lead my favourite chair drumming play-along with the group.

This activity is a great example of the “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus” approach that works so well on the Musical Futures platform. A chair drumming session can be set up for a whole class with minimal investment, preparation or prior knowledge. All you need is a chair each and something that will work as drumsticks — chopsticks are ideal, buckets as pictured below, optional.

Other standout moments included the teachers working in groups to adapt and bring to life a piece of AI-generated music — an avenue I’ve been spending a lot of time exploring over the past year — and later, creating an original song out of the Rock Squad Playalongs. It’s always hard to know what the first step in collaborative songwriting with students should look like, and working through these two exercises gave all the teachers some really useful starting points, and in the case of Suno, some real food for thought.

Another great spinoff from the day is the commitment from a group of teachers to now stay in touch, collaborate more, and hopefully see the return of the Musical Futures team in the not-too-distant future.

I’m very proud to be associated with this organisation as one of just two Champion Schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This means taking the lead on trying the new resources as they come on-stream, as well as offering up our own innovations and ideas from time to time.

I’m also very proud of my school and community. We gave our course facilitators, Anna and Chris, a powerful Pōwhiri (a traditional Māori welcome) the day before the course, and all of our hearts were full.

Ngā Mihi Nui to our school’s Management and Board, who have been hugely supportive of me and the music programme here at Monrad/Tirohanga.

I can’t wait to do it all again sometime soon.