Everything is possible: A Boat in an Endless Blue Sea

Every good collaborative project starts with one person excitedly crying ‘There is something crazy – we have to do this!’ down the phone. In this case, classical soprano Kelly Poukens was in Belgium, where she lives, in the middle of a shop holding a bag of apples when she received the call.

The excitable voice on the other end belonged to composer Alastair White, who had just met Naheeda Maharasingam, headteacher at Rathfern Primary School in Catford, London. Between them they had hatched a plan – inspired by a conversation about politics, art and music, as all great plans are – to create an experimental opera with Year 6 children, facilitated and devised by White and Poukens on Zoom, but led in school by teachers Max Ellington, Sally McPherson, Rose Powell and Olivia Zulver.