Global Citizenship Education Resources for Music

Global citizenship helps learners to:

  • Explore how music expresses identity, belonging and feelings in personal life
  • Consider how music is used to protest at social injustice and promote visions of positive change
  • Develop appreciation of diversity and global interconnectedness through exploring the fusion and cross-fertilisation of various musical traditions and the common elements in different musical traditions

The Power of Our Voices: protest songs, human rights and the lyrics of social change

Three lessons which can be used flexibly. The first introduces students to a variety of human rights issues by exploring protest songs from across the ages and around the world. The second lesson focuses on the story of Emmanuel Jal, a former child soldier who was rescued from Sudan. Now an internationally successful recording artist, he uses hip hop to raise awareness of the issue of child soldiers. In lesson 3, students can write their own protest songs with the help of rapper and songwriter Kate Tempest.

Global Music and

Lesson plans from Oxfam to celebrate music from around the world using a global citizenship approach. Choose from numerous stand-alone lessons, offering opportunities for singing, performing, composing, improvising, listening and appraising. The 11-14yrs lesson plans explore free and metrically organised music, improvising traditions, polyrhythmic drumming styles and songs of protest. The 14-16yrs lesson plans look at the influences of Japanese ceremonial music on the music of Benjamin Britten, mnemonics as an aid to musical learning in drumming traditions, the songs of Fela Kuti, songs of slavery and the work of Steve Reich.

Challenging Stereotypes Through World Music

This unit of work for Level 3 was developed by a music teacher in St Margaret Mary’s Secondary School, Glasgow. It explores how we in Scotland are connected to the different styles of music found in the regions of North Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent.

A’ Adam’s Bairns?

This innovative resource explores slavery past and present in the context of Scotland's history, drawing on a number of traditional and contemporary folk songs that can be downloaded free from the website.

Thursday’s Child

This is a two-hour children’s rights musical produced for UNICEF by the composer Greg Snape. The story illustrates why we need the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.It follows a group of children living in an unspecified place who make a journey from desperation (as child labourers breaking stones for roads) encountering children in various forms of distress on the way, eventually to justice (though a Court of a Law) and happiness (finding a mother). All the performance materials and a teachers' handbook are available to download by contacting the composer Greg Snape via his website. The website also features video clips. The songs can be used as a stimulus in their own right alongside the ideas in the teachers' handbook.