“Chickens are just naturally funny,” said artist Colin Smith.
And now, thanks to a partnership between Smith, Harvest Music Festival and Anglophone West School District (ASD-W), chickens—and cats, robins, and dinosaurs—are also educators, of a sort.
Anglophone West enlisted Smith to produce a series of seven whimsical posters for use in music classes at each of the district’s 70 schools. The posters feature the aforementioned animals exemplifying the seven elements of music: beat and rhythm, dynamics, harmony, melody, tempo, texture, and timbre.
Distribution to district schools will begin this week, according to Beth Christie, ASD-W Social Studies, Fine Arts, and Enrichment Coordinator.
“I’ll be sharing the posters with other Anglophone districts after we get ours out,” Christie said.
Smith, who learned about this project from his wife Susan Galbraith, district Fine Art Lead, also painted the mural at Oromocto’s École Arc-En-Ciel.
“We wanted something with ASD-W flair that every music teacher would have in their classroom,” said Jennifer Keating, ASD-W K-12 Music Lead. “Harvest was instrumental in making this happen.”
After Smith finished his drawings, Keating and Christie brought the project to the attention of the Harvest Music Festival, who agreed to fund the printing.
“We came in after they were already developed, fell in love with the images, and thought that if there was any way we could share these around the province, we would totally be on board,” said Harvest Musical Festival General Manager Jeff Richardson. “It’s just a different way to engage [kids] in music theory education.”
While the ASD-W- and- Harvest-branded posters represent a standardized district music-theory teaching tool, they are anything but standard.
Cartoon images have an instant appeal to younger students. But people of all ages will benefit from the visual expression of complex music-theory terms.
“Flocks of birds turn up in most of the drawings I do now,” Smith said. “They give a wonderful sense of movement. They’re a flash of colour where there isn’t any colour. Really, they’re a very useful tool.”
The posters are more than functional, said Christie.
“Colin Smith’s artwork is joyful in making visible the elements of music for our students,” she said. “I know the entire creative team behind them—and our good friends at Harvest Music Festival—hope our teachers see this investment as a nod to the importance of what they teach, and the joy and beauty they add to their school communities.”