Arts graduate Matthew Lendrum is one of 107 Australians named as a Winston Churchill Fellow for 2011.

The former student will use the scholarship to travel to the USA, UK and Germany to study how to engage children, young people and special-needs students through symphonic music.

“I work for the Canberra Symphony Orchestra where I manage Noteworthy, our music education program,” he said. “Noteworthy is a free symphonic music education concert series offered to students across the ACT and reaches almost 10,000 students, or about half of all ACT schools each year.

“As part of our Noteworthy outreach program, we also go to ACT schools catering for students with disabilities. Many of these students cannot come to a concert hall, so we go to them and share the fun of playing music.

“With this fellowship I can now study how the leading artistic institutions of Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States produce music education programs for children and young people.

“This six-week tour of these world-leading organisations will enable me to learn new teaching methods, production ideas and concepts as well as effective performance methods for outreach concerts for students with special needs.”

Mr Lendrum said he was honoured to win the scholarship and that the experience will be invaluable.

“Music is a reason for getting out of bed in the morning; it is a life-long love and it inspires us; it speaks to our creative side and allows us to express ourselves when no words can be found. I know of these joys and I am inspired from seeing children and young people discovering this passion. I can’t wait to go on the Churchill Fellowship and find new ways of inspiring our future audiences and bringing these ideas back to the ACT.”

The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, which was established after the death of Sir Winston Churchill, has now funded more than 3,500 fellowships for Australians with an average value of more than $20,000.