A year eight music class from Mt Aspiring College has won a national songwriting competition designed to inspire the Olympians on their 2012 bid.
We are heading to London is one of five primary and intermediate school songs on an Anthem in Black CD promoted by the New Zealand Olympic Committee for the games.
The CD will be released at an NZOC function in Auckland later this month. Another CD will also be released featuring 10 songs by secondary school songwriters.
"It was a great accomplishment for them. They wrote the song under a lot of time pressure and they were really proud of it, even before they heard they were going to be on the CD," Mt Aspiring head of music Angela Mote said.
The competition was run by the Play It Strange Charitable Trust and the Mt Aspiring College pupils's song won the primary-intermediate category.
Play It Strange general manager Debbie Little confirmed Mt Aspiring College was the only South Island school to feature on the CD.
The other songs were penned by pupils from Newmarket, Henderson, Bayfield and Pukekohe North schools, all in the wider Auckland area.
One of the objectives of Mt Asoiring's junior music programme was to develop teamwork skills and ensemble awareness, and the project fitted perfectly in to the curriculum.
The "real-world experience" was very inspiring for the students, Ms Mote said.
"This particular class has a lot of strong athletes in it. This helped them get into the minds of the athletes. They really applied their experience in sport to the music," she said.
The class of 24 recorded the song at the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) in Invercargill, assisted by third-year SIT students.
The experience was a first for the young musicians and they were overwhelmed and excited to be in a professional recording situation, Ms Mote said.
