Mike Simpson is the Co-Founder and Musical Director of global arts workshop company Inspire-works in the UK who have facilitated workshops to over 1 million participants. He is author of Rhinegold Education’s Teach & Play World-Music series of books+DVDs, an examiner for Trinity College London, a trained Remo HealthRHYTHMS facilitator, a Mental Health First Aider and an Associate of the Royal Society for Public Health. He studied classical percussion at Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London and gamelan in Bali. As a composer, he has had his works performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Belfast’s Waterfront Hall and published by Oxford University Press.
Mike was the leader and organiser of the successful GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS attempts for the largest samba band with 1,675 children at the Royal Albert Hall in 2014 and the largest drumming lesson with 1,827 participants at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London and a further 10,000 participants joining via live stream from 32 different countries in 2016. Both events were raising awareness for work of the charity Street Child United and were finalists in the Music Teacher Awards 2015 & 2017. The latter event involved all 1,827 participants playing Remo Sound Shapes.
In 2020 Mike wrote the RecoveryCurriculum which is influenced by HealthRHYTHMS and helps children and adults with their mental health and wellbeing related to the COVID pandemic. It has so far been used by over 200,000 children in over 1,500 schools in 24 countries.
Inspire-works: https://www.inspire-works.co.uk
RecoveryCurriculum: https://www.inspire-works.co.uk/recovery-curriculum
Inspire-works Drumming for Health & Wellbeing: https://www.inspire-works.co.uk/health
Inspire-works Studios – Online global arts docu-workshops: https://www.inspire-works.com
