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Copyright@ Australian Catholic University 1998-2025 | ABN 15 050 192 660 CRICOS registered provider: 00004G | PRV12008
Copyright@ Australian Catholic University 1998-2025 | ABN 15 050 192 660 CRICOS registered provider: 00004G | PRV12008
Sometimes two people with distinct but complementary skills make the perfect team, with a harmony that allows them to hit the high notes they might struggle to reach on their own. This is certainly the case with Kathryn Williams (Radloff) and Nuala O’Hanlon (Pearson), the double-act behind Keystone Creations – an educational songwriting business that was borne of their shared love of music and helping children to learn.
It all began when they struck up a friendship as co-members of the music ministry at St Kieren’s Catholic Church in Manly Vale, on Sydney’s northern beaches.
“I was singing a song one day at mass,” Nuala recalls, “and afterwards, Kathryn came over and said, ‘Oh, I just love that song. Who wrote it?’ I told her that I wrote the lyrics, and I soon discovered that Kathryn was a musician and a bit of a songwriting guru.”
Weeks later, Nuala asked Kathryn if she’d try composing some music to accompany the lyrics she had written.
“Kathryn came around to my place with her guitar and her two-year-old son, and as her son crawled around us and played on the floor, she very quickly put this amazing music to my lyrics.”
Over the following year, Kathryn and Nuala wrote dozens of songs covering a wide range of curriculum-aligned topics.
“To be honest, if I don’t have the lyrics, I find the songwriting much harder,” says Kathryn, who works as a career educator with ACU’s Student Experience Directorate, and has tertiary qualifications in psychology, creative arts, and education.
“That’s the part where I’ve always said, ‘Oh gosh, I’ve written this great melody, but now I’ve got to come up with the lyrics.’ When Nuala came along, I didn’t have to worry about the words anymore – I could just concentrate on coming up with ideas and writing the music to match these beautiful educational poems.”
At that point, the pair’s songwriting caper was just a hobby.
“Neither of us were businesspeople, and we were happy enough catching up very casually in our spare time to sing and play along,” says Nuala, a schoolteacher with a background in the creative and performing arts, who completed her teacher education at ACU.
“Some of the songs we had written would inevitably make their way to my classroom. I’d sing to the students as a way of helping them to learn something, because music can help the information to stick. Children retain the information better because it’s being sung, which stimulates the part of the brain that’s responsible for reading, maths, and emotional development.”
One day, while Kathryn and Nuala were writing a song, Nuala’s husband commented: “You two should really think about doing something with this. Why don’t you set up a songwriting business?”
Before long, Keystone Creations was born. The duo produced a series of educational songs for schoolchildren on CD, with accompanying teacher resource books. They even had talks with major publishing companies in the hope of securing backing for their business idea.
But their hopes were soon to be dashed.
While the songs were catchy and relevant, Australian schools were swiftly moving towards digital technology in classrooms, making hardcopy learning materials seem obsolete.
“Everyone really loved what we were doing, but the truth was that our timing just wasn’t right,” Kathryn says. “We printed off all these books and CDs, and do you know what? Around two-thirds of them are still sitting in my shed at home. They’ve never seen the light of day.”
While Kathryn and Nuala kept up their presence on social media, blogs and online stores, it wasn’t until years later, when they discovered an innovative Australian company named ClickView, that their business idea took a leap forward.
Dubbed as Australia’s “Netflix of education”, ClickView uses cloud-based technology to deliver educational videos to teachers and students, with a focus on content linked to the curriculum and key learning outcomes.
It was immediately clear that Kathryn and Nuala’s songs would fit the bill.
ClickView’s in-house animators have since produced videos for more than 70 songs from the duo’s ‘Curriculum Karaoke’ series.
“When ClickView took us on board, our resources gained some real traction in schools,” Kathryn says.
“All around Australia, and internationally, thousands of students have been able to read and sing along to the lyrics of our songs.”
The videos are aimed at primary school children, covering topics such as caring for the environment, classroom rules and responsibilities, building resilience, and navigating friendships, to name a few.
“All of the songs are attached to the curriculum, so it’s high-quality content that teachers can use to achieve key learning outcomes in a musical form,” Nuala says.
She adds that the videos are even suitable for teachers who don’t sing or play music themselves.
“If you’re a teacher who can sing, that’s great, but if you don’t feel comfortable doing that, you can press a button and use the resources to really get the kids involved in learning about things like democracy, the human body system, Antarctica, or about bullying with our song called ‘Bully-Free Zone!’ …”
Nuala then breaks into song, belting out the chorus: “Bullying is not okay, it’s never a solution. Deal with problems as they arise with conflict resolution. Caring isn’t optional, it’s what we all expect. Everyone is welcome here, but bullying we reject!"
Having witnessed firsthand the impact their songs have had on her students, Nuala is a firm believer that music is a “uniting force”.
“It lights up the brain, it motivates, and all of a sudden you’ve got their attention and they’re singing along and singing together,” she says.
“They’re smiling, they’re moving, and they’re emotionally united as they engage with the message of the song – no matter what the topic.”
Kathryn, meanwhile, has drawn on her experience of running a small songwriting business – through all its highs and its lows – to enrich her career education work at ACU, where she leads an annual workshop on problem-solving and innovation for allied health students.
“Innovation requires identifying a need and filling a gap. That, combined with our empathy for time-poor teachers, is the key reason that Nuala and I have persisted with this business idea – we care about giving children and teachers access to music-based resources that will enhance their learning experience,” Kathryn says.
“We’ve had to pick ourselves up when things didn’t go our way and be supportive of one another through that process, and these are the types of lessons I try to impart to students.
“I tell them about the remaining books that are still sitting in our sheds because of ill-advised decisions, and they really appreciate that authenticity and the stories about the journey we’ve had.”
“We’re a really good team,” Nuala chimes in with a smile, and Kathryn concurs.
“We are ‘partners in rhyme’,” she says, “and it’s all about harmony. We’re a harmonious duo.”
Copyright@ Australian Catholic University 1998-2025 | ABN 15 050 192 660 CRICOS registered provider: 00004G | PRV12008