One thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that my passion for music is driven by one basic principle – I like change.
I worked a great many things before I finally admitted to myself that I had to do music or I would slowly breakdown. One of those things, was working with young people. It was my job to get the best out of my students and I revelled in doing it. I love kids. They love things for no other reason than because they do. Like one of my students who built a rocket without realising that it would be classed as an extra-curricular activity; or the girl that was ashamed to be Jewish and is now at Cambridge studying medicine because all she wants to do is help people; or the boy who couldn’t remember anything I said to him because his preferred learning style was through pictures and colour. All different, all exceptional.
Kids are my heroes because they are just as they are.
Why we then push our kids to go through identical educational programmes, that end in overpriced degrees whose fees seem to rise far faster than their value, is really beyond me.
Ultimately, where are we going with this? The word I hear most often in the adult world is ‘dissatisfied’.
Music was my change. I found it by digging deep and finding a way to be truthful about who I was. I needed change, because nothing made sense to me unless I found it.
So as we start a new year, I wanted to share my position on this. It’s simple really: I hope we can build a world where we can embrace our differences and honour our natural abilities rather than punishing them. I hope we can build a world where passion is more powerful than prejudice.
I hope we can build a world that celebrates change…