Friday Headlines

13 May 2022

During her final week in school before embarking on study leave with the rest of Year 13, Martineau Music scholar Caitlin Kisumba joined us for a very special assembly. Caitlin spoke about her time in school as a Music Scholar and shared news of a very exciting music initiative she had been involved with.

The project ‘Your Love Lifts Me Up - A BSL Community Chorus With A Purpose For Birmingham 2022’ is a multi-agency collaboration featuring Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and other local community organisations, is a part of the Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival and involved children from Longwill School for the deaf. There were many other schools in the region involved, as well as Watoto Children's Choir from Uganda, the home country of Caitlin’s father Andrew Kisumba.

The vision of the project was to elevate the deaf community who were overlooked during the pandemic: they could not lip read due to everyone wearing masks and couldn't receive the 5pm updates until later, as there were no interpreters. 

Penned by Mr Kisumba, Caitlin composed the introduction and performed a violin solo whilst her sister, former EHS pupil and Martineau Music Scholar, Eryna, composed the orchestral arrangement for the introduction and played cello. Caitlin, Eryna, and another Old Girl and former Martineau Music scholar Jody Smith can all be seen in the video, alongside Mrs Kisumba, also playing violin.

Do watch the video on YouTube (link below); we challenge anyone to watch it and not feel inspired and uplifted! 

Thank you to Caitlin for sharing this fascinating project with us.

As a Martineau Music Scholar, Caitlin is a familiar face around school and has made a strong commitment to school life during her time here. As well as demonstrating her incredible talent at various concerts she can frequently be found behind the scenes, taking on a leadership role in the Music department and helping to organise other musicians. We shall miss seeing her in school and shall continue to watch her musical career beyond EHS with interest!