MAKING rubbish music is being encouraged at North-East primary schools as pupils learn to play junk instruments to perform at an upcoming festival.

Youngsters from High Coniscliffe Primary School in Darlington and Bishopton Redmarshall School, Stockton, are working with top musicians from the Sage in Gateshead to create music from trash items to play at the Festival of Thrift in September.

High Coniscliffe headteacher Wendy Aitken said the children absolutely loved getting to grips with a variety of trash instruments in the first of several workshops they will take part in leading up to the festival.

She said: “They loved seeing how they could make sound out of anything; it doesn’t have to be an expensive bit of kit.

“It was all very clever and inventive, yet simple at the same time.”

The musicians leading the session were the Sage’s musical director and percussionist Brendan Murphy and percussion strand leader Rob Kitchen who said: “It was incredible to start introducing two wonderful schools to the amazing world of found sounds, freeing children’s minds from the fixed perspectives of a scrap object’s true audio potential and giving a new meaning to heavy metal.”

The pupils will perform their piece at the Festival of Thrift festival at Lingfield Point, Darlington, over the weekend of September 27.