Since the ESTA PG Cert course started in May 2017 my feet haven’t touched the ground and now, some 18 months or more since I last put finger to keyboard for this blog, it’s hard to believe that we’ve already had the graduation ceremony for our first cohort of ESTA PG Cert students and the second cohort are about to begin the fourth and final Unit of their course. Most of exciting of all is the news that from August 2019 when the third cohort begin, we’ll be welcoming piano teachers to the course and from 2020 we open up to all – well almost all – instruments and voice. One of the highlights of the course is the summer school which takes place at the University of Chichester and runs alongside the regular ESTA summer school. You can see some of the first cohort of students from the 2017 summer school and the full cohort from the 2018 one. One of the guests this year was Aleksey Igudesman who is not only an amazing violinist but also a great entertainer as you can tell from the photo. I’ve been fortunate to make three trips to South East Asia to help promote ESTAs professional development offering. In October 2017, Phil Aird, ESTA CEO and I went to the Music China trade show in Shanghai, taking the opportunity to visit Hong Kong and we returned to Hong Kong and Singapore in January 2018 to do further recruitment. In July 2018, ESTA was invited to speak at the ASTA (Australian String Association) conference in Perth, Australia and from there we travelled on to Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore, Guangzhou, Macau and then back to HK, before heading back to the UK. These trips are hard work but highly enjoyable and it’s satisfying to be able to offer courses and qualifications to teachers that they’re really enthusiastic about. In the spring of 2018 we launched ESTA Education as the platform for ESTAs professional development work and in the autumn we launched our ESTA Education Certificate for Teachers course, aimed at piano teachers in Hong Kong. It was great to have our old friend and colleague, Bill Thomson, at the helm for this face-to-face course which was well-received. Early in 2019, another former colleague, Naomi Kayayan, will be leading the same programme on its second outing. Our third new course, the ESTA Education Certificate for Music Educators (ESTA CME) will be launched in July 2019 led by Maureen Hanke. To have the level 4 ESTA CME, and level 7 ESTA PG Cert, in our portfolio alongside the foundation level ESTA CfT means that we can already offer professional development programmes for teachers at all stages of their professional journey. When I got back to the UK in July after our long trip promoting courses, it seemed wise to take a week or so at a more leisurely pace with a little holiday on the Isle of Wight, before the ESTA summer school at the beginning of August. We’re regular visitors there and enjoy the predominantly gentle climate, fresh air and seaside walks. During one such walk, back up the steep hill from the beach, I noticed a little discomfort in my chest and shoulders that I’d not experienced before, so I made a visit to my GP once back at home. Cutting a long story short, I’m now recovering from a quadruple heart bypass, something that most certainly wasn’t in the diary earlier in the year. Thanks to the excellent surgical work and nursing care at Papworth, I should, all being well, be back in business very soon following the operation last November. Unfortunately, I won’t be back to work quite early enough for the first gig of the year with the Plus 5s, the Morgan band, at Woburn in January, but I shall be able to go to the function and cheer them along.
ESTA PG Cert 2018-19 Summer School University of Chichester August 2018
ESTA PG Cert 2017-18 Summer School University of Chichester August 2017
ESTA 2018 Summer school with Aleksey Igudesman
ESTA PG Cert Graduation Chichester October 2018