Ukuleles of all colours will be on show for the Ukulele le Chéile in West Cork this month.

Are uke kidding me?

The happy sound of 200 ukuleles will ring out in West Cork this month when children from three schools strum together for an epic ukulele jam session.

The session Ukulele le Chéile, which is part of the Creative Clusters initiative, will see staff and pupils from Kilgarriffe NS Clonakilty, Ballymoney NS Enniskeane and Ballineen, and St Multose NS Kinsale unite at the amphitheatre in Inchydoney.

The children have performed for one another many times via Zoom but this will be the first time they all meet in person. During their giant jam, they will be showing off their newly acquired ukulele skills as well as demonstrating some material they have composed themselves about climate change.

They will then all head to the beach to create sand sculptures illustrating how climate change is affecting our oceans, but not before the Credit Union in Clonakilty surprises them with ice-creams. As an additional treat, local artist Rawney from Cork band The Monks will perform for the children in the open-air amphitheatre.

The first step of the schools’ journey was to apply for a place as a creative cluster. Initially, staff used the survey platform SurveyMonkey to understand what kind of programme students wanted, and so the idea for Ukulele le Chéile was born.

Ukuleles and tuners were bought and uniquely decorated, and ukulele teachers Christine Deady and Isobel Towse were brought on board.

The children in the middle and senior classes across the three schools were taught the basic chords and stumming patterns for a variety of songs and several musical concerts were arranged.

Co-ordinating Teacher Carolyn Buttimer said: “Despite the nuisance of Covid-19, we persevered and revelled in having live music float through our open classroom windows mid-winter and thoroughly enjoyed our outdoor concerts and hot chocolate.

“In the spring, each school created a video to introduce their school and to show the children from the other schools around their premises. The children took great pride in seeing their school on display over Zoom and it intrigued the children to see inside another school! It was on these Zoom meetings that the children were first able to showcase their abilities on the ukulele and perform for the other children.”

The Ukulele le Chéile takes place on 26 May from 10am-1.30pm at the Inchydoney amphitheatre, weather permitting. A secondary date has been set for the following Monday.