A singing celebration of our oceans

Students at Horfield School in our hometown of Bristol, are celebrating World Ocean Day with a bit of a twist. They’ll be singing their Song of the Sea in celebration of the ocean and are challenging schools across the country to learn the words and sing along with them in a bid to raise awareness of the issue of plastic pollution.

We first heard the song at the launch of the Polly Roger, Hubbub’s plastic fishing boat here in Bristol and knew we had to do something to help them in the quest to save our oceans.

The inspiration for Song of the Sea came when assistant headteacher Kirsten Cunningham attended a Science STEM summit with students and other schools from across Bristol and North Somerset. Here, the children spent a day learning about the ocean and the problems of plastic pollution and the team leading the STEM project challenged every school to make a difference.

“As we are passionate about Performing Arts, we decided that we’d make a difference through music and send a message as a song. We challenged our pupils to write poems about the ocean, the words from which inspired the lyrics for our song. Our aspiration is that as many schools as possible sing our song, to send its message as far as possible” – Claire Alsop, Horfield School.

Sing along with us

The song is suitable for whole-school singing, or with a smaller group such as a school choir. The resources are all contained in the description on the school’s YouTube, with a link to a free downloadable score, lyrics sheet and backing track. The video also has subtitled lyrics so children can sing along with the video.