Not Just Music: The 2025 PYP Winter Concert

A light feather that withstands the storm. It is from this image, evoked by Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope” is the thing with feathers, that the Winter Concert 2025 took shape: a collective project in which music, images and reflection came together in a single, shared narrative.

Each class worked on a verse of the poem and on the values it conveys: altruism, sharing, dreams, love, resilience and positivity, translating them not only into songs, but also into visual elements designed to accompany and enhance the musical performances. The concert thus became an immersive experience, where what was heard and what was seen spoke the same emotional language.

Alongside the musical work, a rich creative pathway developed, guided by the Sparx team in collaboration with the Music teacher and classroom teachers. The goal was not to “decorate” the concert, but to build a dialogue between sound and image, giving value to the creative process of the students. The visual set design, including the animations and videos projected during the event, was created entirely in the classroom, through activities carefully designed to align with each group’s age, skills and expressive languages.

Younger students worked with both hands-on and digital materials, transforming snowflakes, gloves and sleighs into animated elements using tools such as Canva, discovering how a simple object can become part of a visual narrative. Older classes explored drawing and collage, experimenting with textures, composition and movement: the characters created on paper were then animated using Animated Drawings (Meta AI), learning how a static illustration can come to life through thoughtful choices of motion.

As students grew older, the work became increasingly structured. Some classes created animated GIFs using Tayasui Sketches School and Keynote, reflecting on themes of friendship and caring for others, while other groups engaged in a more introspective journey focused on dreams and their own “inner light.” In this case, graphic expression and words came together through the use of artificial intelligence, with the creation of custom fonts using Calligraphr.

The oldest students, finally, experimented with the stop-motion technique, building short animated stories with LEGO and minifigures using the Stop Motion Studio app. It was a group effort that required planning, collaboration and patience, turning even the smallest movement into a deliberate narrative choice.

During the Winter Concert, all these visual productions accompanied the musical performances as dynamic backgrounds, offering the audience a clear sense of a shared journey. They were not decorative images, but visible traces of daily work grounded in listening, experimentation and creativity.

The Winter Concert 2025 was thus the outcome of a broad and integrated educational project, where music, art and technology engaged in a natural dialogue. An experience that gave space to the expressive languages of children, reminding us that hope can take many forms, and often grows out of what is built together, one step at a time.