More than 300 children performed on stage alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Marina Theatre.

The pupils from Poplars Community School, Red Oak Primary School, Roman Hill Primary School, and St Mary's RC Primary, wrote their own pieces of music and poetry to perform at the theatre in Lowestoft.

Music from Leonard Bernstein, Sergei Prokofiev, Edvard Greig, Leo Delibes and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov including Mambo from West Side Story, In the Hall of the Mountain King, Flight of the Bumblebee and Flower Duet were performed alongside the children's original compositions.

The performance was the culmination of the Lowestoft Music and Literacy Project, led by the Marina Theatre and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with support from the charity Children and the Arts, which started in February this year.

It is part of a three-year partnership with the Marina's START programme, a national initiative which enables arts venues to build a bespoke three-year school engagement programme.

Chief executive of Children and the Arts, Rosie Millard, said: 'The benefits are enormous. These children have worked with professional musicians, they may have been working with instruments that they have never seen before or heard before or understood how they work.

'They had real pride, here they were taking part in a performance with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra inspired by a work of Shakespeare. It doesn't really get better than that.'

She added: 'Children in the Arts is very proud to be partnered with the Marina Theatre for three years and next year there will be a similar thing of engagement with a knock out company of international calibre.

'This is not just a flash in the pan and that is one of the important things we set stall by, it is a durational engagement with schools and young people because arts is not something just for a one off treat and I think sadly for many children it is.

'It should be something they are able to have all the time and hopefully this is the beginning of that journey for them.

Creative leader of the project, Sam Glazer, said: 'It allows those children that don't necessarily excel in other areas to find strengths and aptitudes they have got they might not otherwise discover.'