Composer Annette McNelis grew up in Buncrana, on the beautiful Inishowen Peninsula of County Donegal, Ireland. She lives in Buncrana with her husband Ciaran and their cat Wanda. They have three grown-up children.
Annette has over 15 years’ experience working as a creative music educator. She currently works as a freelance community music workshop leader. Annette develops and delivers themed creative music workshops for schools, local authorities and community groups throughout Ireland. Annette is also a part-time keyboard tutor with the Donegal Education and Training Board’s Music Education Partnership.
What inspired the Musical?
Through her work, and from personal experience, Annette firmly believes in the effectiveness of using music as a means for educating, inspiring and motivating people.
She also believes in the positive benefits of educating children through enjoyable and creative hands-on projects. Alongside teaching new skills, such projects can help children gain a better understanding of their own individual gifts and strengths. This can help to greatly enhance the learning experience.
As Annette had already written environmentally-themed songs, she believed that an environmentally themed musical would be the ideal project to benefit both children and the environment. Thus Environment the Musical was created and the educational resource pack was developed. It provides 8 fun and easy to learn songs for the teacher in the classroom, together with all the material a school needs to stage a show. Thanks to the catchy songs and fast-moving story line, the children learn important environmental messages and the audience learns while being entertained.
You can read more about how Annette came to develop Environment the Musical in this blog post:https://annettemcnelis.ie/why-an-environmentally-themed-musical/