Southend Mencap run a Music School for children, which meets on most Saturdays during school term time.  It is the brainchild of David Stanley, who offered his services to the society back in 2000 in an attempt to provide music sessions to the learning disabled.

The venue for this group is Kingsdown School but the Music School wouldn’t be the success it has become without the fantastic support of The Eastwood Academy who had been supporting the club since it’s introduction and hosted the sessions up to the end of the summer term of 2013. Eastwood’s support was fantastic as they allowed the club the use of their state of the art music equipment and premises free of charge and also allowed us the use of their theatre to stage concerts and performances.  The move to Kingsdown was a necessary one though as their premises are larger and more accessible to those with more complex needs and will allow the music school to continue offering opportunities to new students without having to resort to a waiting list.

The children’s session runs from 9am to 10.15am but each child needs to be booked in for the sessions they wish to do.  The age range for the Music School group is 7 year olds through to 19 year olds.

Our Music School is very well known locally and they do a number of performances across the community each year, which sees them join forces with the adults from our full time Music Man Project, and these include their Christmas show tour that takes place each December at Southend Christian Fellowship and Highlands Methodist Church.  Additionally, the Music School has hosted two sold out shows at The Cliffs Pavilion in July 2009 and July 2011 plus were also part of the ground breaking Music is Magic concerts at The London Palladium in 2015 and 2017 as well as the Royal Albert Hall concert in 2019.

To see how the Music School has grown and developed since it started, please go to our Galleries page and select the Music School Album.

You can see details of when the Music School takes place by going to our Flyers page and selecting the Children’s Music School picture.