The Lost Happy Endings
The Lost Happy Endings
Music in the Community
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The Lost Happy Endings received funding from the Scottish Arts Council’s Children and Young People Fund. Please note that funding for children and young people can currently be accessed through the Youth Music Initiative and the Education and Outreach Projects fund. |
Edinburgh school children and Music in the Community performed at the Royal Botanic Gardens in March.
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The Lost Happy Endings tells the story of Jub, keeper of the happy endings of bedtime stories, who has to save the day and restore sweet dreams everywhere after a wicked witch steals all the happy endings. |
The 'magical and musical promenade adventure through the Royal Botanic Gardens' on 6 and 7 March was based on the book by Carol Ann Duffy, and was produced by Botanic Productions and The University of Edinburgh. Children from Victoria Primary and Craigroyston Primary performed the work.
| The primary school children worked with a team of University of Edinburgh music students. Each group rehearsed their part separately before coming together for intensive rehearsals as part of a team of 150 people who created the performance. |
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The production was inspired by nature and words. Carol Ann Duffy’s intense musical and rhythmic prose was one of the main reasons for choosing this particular story to adapt for a drama work. The adaptation was informed by all the children who worked on the production in addition to the words of other writers – e. e. cummings, Jon McGregor and Libby Houston – whose prose shares a similar lyrical quality. The words were woven into a music score by Dee Isaacs to encapsulate the story within the music.
Music in the Community is a flourishing programme of both undergraduate and postgraduate courses based at The University of Edinburgh’s Music Department. Set up in 1991 by Professor Nigel Osborne in response to a growing need for music to be more accessible across the community, the initiative offers a training course for music students at the University.
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The programme covers performing arts outreach, community development, creative arts therapies and conflict resolution. The University of Edinburgh has been a pioneer in the discipline and has implemented projects both within the UK and abroad developing related methodologies and training programmes. |
Dee Isaacs, composer of The Lost Happy Endings, runs the undergraduate programme.
| She and the show’s director, Roxana Pope, have been collaborating since 2000 and set up Botanic Productions specifically to work towards music theatre performances in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens. |
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 | These performances draw together both community and students and act as both training projects and as professional productions in their own right.
| For more information, visit the Music in the Community website. | |