The First World War is no stranger to the arts, having been a topic for artistic expression even during the conflict. The scale and scope of the destruction was such that we are still feeling the effects today, so it's no surprise to discover that the so-called Great War continues to inspire artists a century later.
HMDT Music is a charity that is led by general director Adam Eisenberg and creative director Tertia Sefton-Green. The charity seeks to enrich young people's lives through music by increasing their access to high-quality musical experiences like its ‘Trench Brothers’ project, which has been taken into schools across England since 2014. How did this project come about?
‘HMDT Music has a history of remembering voices that are rarely heard – whether that's children of the Holocaust with ‘Hear Our Voice’ or the black baseball players experiencing segregation in ‘Shadowball’ – so when Adam started looking into the efforts of the Indian army what he found really resonated strongly,’ says Sefton-Green. ‘When we started, there were a few stories that people had heard of such as Khudadad Khan, the first Muslim soldier to receive the Victoria Cross, but there are a huge amount of unknown stories, particularly given the extent of the Indian army's contribution.
‘Through that research, we found out more about the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR) who weren't allowed to fight because they were black – they came over and were put on the back line because no one trusted them to have a gun. Learning that left a powerful impression on us. As we do a lot of work in inner-city areas with diverse communities, we wanted to find an entry point into the First World War that made sense and showed people that it was in fact part of their story – it wasn't just the white man's war that we see in pictures that form the main way that people learn about the conflict.’
Along with being depicted as a white, Western war, the First World War is seared into the public conscience as a desperate and cruel conflict. Most people are familiar with the depiction of the trenches as a cold and miserable place so, given the brutality of the war, why was it chosen as a topic for a primary school project?
The artefact workshop helps bring authenticity to the students’ song lyrics © CLIVE BARDA
‘For a while, I really struggled with making this have an impact and balancing that with the fact that there's only so much that primary school children can understand and should have to understand,’ says Sefton-Green. ‘I took these two armies and created a story of how they found camaraderie – that's the uplifting element of the soldiers’ stories. Among the horrors, these amazing friendships formed. There's a key point where the Indian officer doesn't understand why Herbert Morris – a 17-year-old Jamaican who suffered shellshock, which led to his eventual execution for desertion – wants to run away when he isn't fighting on the frontline. Cleveland Watkiss's character, Norman Manley – who became Jamaica's first premier minister – reminds him that the army wouldn't function without soldiers like Morris. For children, that's a concept that makes sense for them – it's a metaphor that they can apply to their own life. One of comradeship, sacrifice and togetherness.’
In schools
The project is formed of multiple participatory workshops that show students what life was like for soldiers in the Indian army and BWIR. These include: an artefact workshop, where students get to handle a mixture of real and replica items; a costumed interpreter, where an actor playing an Indian solider talks to the students about his experiences; a puppet-making workshop that teaches students about the differences in the soldier's uniform while they make a puppet to use in the final performance; and a research task using an online toolkit. This last workshop has students study the life of a particular soldier and then write letters home from his point of view. These letters are then turned into lyrics by Sefton-Green, which the students subsequently work on with a composer to set to music. Both the puppets and the children's letter-song form important parts of the final performance, a 35-minute production that sees a professional crew coming into the school and working with the students for a day.
‘Trench Brothers’ has been taken across England, in schools throughout London and Lancashire, and this term saw the project go into schools around Brighton. I spoke with Jane Noble, who is one of the teachers who took part in this final leg of the project: ‘“Trench Brothers” has offered our children such a variety of learning experiences ranging from drama and puppet-making to composing and singing repertoire, all of which they would never before have encountered. It has been fantastic to have the opportunity to work with talented professionals and to see the work that goes in to creating such a powerful and moving theatre production. Musically, this has been challenging and demanding and has raised the children's expectations of what they can actually achieve in their singing and broadened their awareness and experience of musical theatre. The children spent many weeks learning the emotive songs in their music lessons and then had the exciting opportunity of working with our local schools, creative directors and professional singers to put the whole show together. It has been an incredible journey.’
On 17 October, this iteration of the project culminated in a large performance at the Brighton Dome, itself a part of the story that is being told as it was used a military hospital by the Indian Army during the war and the BWIR had a training camp in nearby Seaford.
‘It needed a finale,’ says Sefton-Green, ‘and the Dome was particularly meaningful. As an area, it has a lot of local resonance. The performance was about bringing all those letter songs together and expanding it to make a large commemoration. I'd always wanted it to have a public performance. Cleveland's a famous singer and he did all the performances without being able to invite his friends. If nothing else, I felt I owed it to him!’
The sentiment is definitely appreciated by Watkiss, who tells me: ‘It was the first public performance, and sadly our last, of this great project. The Dome show was an emotional one for me, as I've done all the performances on this project. I love the idea that more people got the chance to see it. Very little of this information and important history is in the public consciousness – we need a good balance of true history, for everyone.’
Beyond the Brighton performance, HMDT Music will be offering packages for national commemoration days which incorporate many of the elements of the projects, such as the costumed interpreter or artefact handling. Further information can be found on its website: hmdt.org.uk
