The Royal Opera House Muscat prides itself on enriching lives through diverse artistic, cultural, and educational programmes – so you can imagine how privileged we felt when we were invited to travel to Oman earlier this month to deliver workshops combining storytelling, music and maths. And, with the help of the Outreach and Education team, we were able to plan ahead and rethink elements of our popular CSI: Tunes programme to incorporate elements of Arabic culture, too. The workshops, accommodating three age ranges, were held inside the astonishing Opera House complex itself.
It was Jackson Kavanagh, a member of our core team, who was lucky enough to make the trip (although a brief glitch saw his luggage sitting in Istanbul overnight, rather than accompanying him to Muscat!). “It was such a magical experience,” he says. “Little did we think when we founded As Creatives that we’d one day be taking our programmes to one of the world’s greatest cultural institutions!” Not that it was all work and no play though – as Jackson also found time to marvel at some of the planet’s finest dancers, in the breathtaking “Flamenco Meets Tango”, take time to breathe in the stillness of the Al Ameer Mosque – and barter for bargains in the Mutrah Souq!
About our CSI: Tunes Maths Workshops
A marvellous mixture of music and maths, The Mathematical Music Mystery challenges children to use a whole range of skills in working out which of six suspects hacked a computer owned by music mogul Henrietta Smith. Was it the pop singer, Betty B? What about Hamid Hussain, the famous oud player? Or could it have been Mouna Nazari, the classical violinist? This engaging and entertaining workshop will see children working in pairs to combine musical notation and data handling in a bid to identify the criminal – and bring to a coda his or her misdeeds!