Elementary school students write original song with local musician

The Boy From Outside the Box is a song about a young boy who is new to Thunder Bay and lonely at his new school.

“He soon makes a friend that cheers him up,” said Hana Whalen, a Grade 4 student at St. Bernard School.

Hana and her classmates wrote the song with local musician Rodney Brown as part of the Community Arts and Heritage Education Program – a program that brings artists into Thunder Bay schools and explore different forms of art with students in Grades 4, 5 and 6.

Thursday the 22 classes involved in CAHEP this year displayed or performed their projects at the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium for the eighth annual Arts Fiesta.

Hana and her class performed the Boy From Outside the Box on stage with Brown accompanying them on guitar.

“It was pretty fun,” she said. “I was a bit nervous though, but after a while I calmed down and I’m pretty good now.”

The class came up with their ideas for the song and Brown offered up some of his thoughts to add to the mix; Hana said writing a song was cool.

“We thought of really good lyrics and we thought of lyrics that could really go with the song and they did,” she said. “But it was really hard to try to translate some words in English into French because we had a verse in French. We couldn’t translate it literally because then it would make no sense.”

St. Bernard’s song was one of 11 performances on the Auditorium stage; in the lobby, there were more than 250 pieces of artwork.

CAHEP executive director Pam Cain said the Art Fiesta is the culmination of hours of work artists have done with the students and it’s also a chance for the kids to show off their hard work.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” she said. “Lots of time they work hard in the classroom and are doing projects and they never go beyond the classroom.”

Cain said it’s also a great way for kids wanting to be artists to feel what it’s like to have their work exhibited or to perform on a real stage.

“The creative arts are all around us and are such an important part of education, to get students thinking,” she said. “Art is such a great medium to get people to think and communicate and start talking about things.”