Rainbow Fish at the Halle

Now that Mr D is edging ever nearer to school age (seriously HOW did that happen?!?) I am engaging more and more with the Home Education community across Manchester.

I recently spotted that someone was organizing a trip to see a ‘schools’ production of The Rainbow Fish at the Halle.

We are really fortunate to have the Halle Orchestra on our doorstep and the total cost for Mr D, Miss E and I was only £12 so it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.

We headed over to the city centre for the 13:15 performance. The production was taking place at Halle St Peter’s which is in Ancoats, an area of Manchester that I am less familiar with. I have to say I was really impressed with how smart Ancoats looked. It’s an area of Manchester that I intend to head back to and explore at some point as there was a lot going on development wise.

St Peter’s itself is a fabulous building and I was excited to get inside. There were two school groups there and our Home Educators group. We took our seats in the centre of the seating area (inbetween the two school groups) and the children were each given a shaker. We have also been asked to make a clippy the crab to take along so we had those too.

The composer of the piece spoke first to explain what would happen and then the performance started. The musicians introduced themselves and their instruments before getting into the story of the The Rainbow Fish (affiliate link) itself.

Mr D was captivated throughout and joined in with the singing and shaking of his shaker at the various stages. Miss E was a bit unsure, although she has been a little out of sorts recently so maybe that affected her. She certainly brightened up about halfway through.

The production was around 45 minutes long and it was really good and a great way to introduce children to the orchestra and the idea of a story being interpreted through music and dance. I posted a short clip herehall on my Instagram feed.

After the performance had finished we had a quick look at the costumes and instruments before heading home and past an enormous excavator which made Mr D’s day!

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