RCO Dan animation wins BBC award

RCO Dan animation wins BBC award


Dan and the Magic Musician has won a prestigious BBC Connect and Create Award.

The project, an eight-minute animated film commissioned by the Royal College of Organists from the University of Bradford, is designed to introduce young people and their teachers to the organ.

The film tells the story of young Dan who, with the help of the Magic Musician, finds out that because so many different types of pipe go together to make up an organ, it can make an incredible range of music and sounds – leading them to declare “it’s the greatest musical instrument of all”.

The film is freely available to pupils and their teachers at www.DanMagic.org, along with a range of teaching materials and information.

RCO head of outreach and education Simon Williams said: “We commissioned the animation to present the organ to children as an engaging instrument with wonderful music, as natural and playable and modern as any other musical instrument that they may already have encountered.

“We have been delighted with the hugely positive response it has received from children, their teachers, and the wider music world, and this award is really the icing on the cake.

“It is a much-deserved recognition of the imagination, creativity and the technical skill which went into the making of 'Dan' by the team at the University of Bradford.”

Dan and the Magic Musician, one of three shortlisted finalists in the Innovation category, was awarded the top prize at a ceremony at the BBC’s Education and Community Partnership annual conference at Liverpool John Moores University.

The Innovation Award reflects how new and established technology can collaborate with traditional content creation skills, to deliver original and inventive audience experience. Judges were looking for the originality and creativity of the idea, the development and adaptation of existing skills, the illustration of new ways of content creation and the clarity of the presentation of ideas, and the overall audience appeal.

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