Comments From Ceol Champions

Dr. Evelyn Grant, CIT Cork School of Music and Radio Presenter, Lyric FM

"I strongly feel that Ceol is precisely the intervention currently needed in Primary Schools – both to support the teachers and to lay the foundation for music literacy. The fact that so much work has been done already by Ceol in developing and piloting the programme makes it ideal.  The Ceol project is very much in line with best practice internationally and deals with all the strands of the curriculum. Music literacy is severely under-developed in schools at present. There is no doubt that early intervention is most effective and international literature shows evidence of the correlation between music literacy and learning competencies in all curriculum subjects."

Finbar Furey, musician, singer / songwriter, actor

It’s getting very bad at the moment, kids don’t even understand their own culture let alone their music, you know? And I think it’s a huge loss that we’re not gonna miss until about 20 years from now, and then we’re really gonna miss it because it’ll be so hard to get it back. It’s like playing an instrument and then packing it up for 20 years. You try to pick it up again and you can’t do it. You have to go back and relearn it again...”

Declan O’Rourke, singer / songwriter

“When I was going to do the Leaving Cert, they gave us a list of subjects we had to pick from, and I picked music straight away because it was really what I was most interested in, and I was told that sadly they hadn’t got the funding for it, so I couldn’t do it. And that was it. I just had to go and find my own way of pursuing it. It’s great to see that the kids around now, these days, have facilities to play music and to learn music…It’s very nice for them. I wish I’d had it, too.”

Gerard Flanagan, Head of Music, Kylemore College, City of Dublin, Vocational Education Committee.

"According to one of the last arts council reports only 2% of students have access to a music school in their area, and obviously this is something that music teachers—in particular music organisers—would like to fix, and Ceol is right in the heart of that sort of solution.”

“There is a community of people out there who are interested in and passionate about music and that is very, very important to sustain and develop. Obviously the way to develop that is through the children because they are going to be your community in the future. So it’s got to be a very positive thing to encourage what Ceol is doing and to underwrite it and to ensure its success in the future.”