Since 2005 Tim Watts has been Composer-in-Residence at Bedford School where he holds the title of Eileen Norris Fellow in Composition. His first year in this role has seen the premieres of three major new works, including two concertos for unusual solo instruments. In November 2005 a concerto for organ and strings - Bright Cecilia - celebrated the feast day of music's patron saint while June 2006 saw the first performance of a lyrical and dramatic new concerto for alto saxophone and symphony orchestra. Between these instrumental works came the Three Songs for Spring for chamber choir and wind sextet, setting poems by Emily Dickinson and performed to mark the opening of a new Music School building by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies on 3rd March 2006

His second year in the post produced the Sonatina for brass, Winter Sketch for wind trio, a Rhapsody for oboe and piano and the introit, Vocem Iucunditatis. The first term of his third and final year has seen the premieres of two Christmas works, a twenty-minute cantata, Shepherds, based on one of the York cycle of mystery plays and the Fisherman's Carol. By contrast, this term's premieres also included a short tango for dance band, El Camavado.

In addition to the composition of new works for Bedford School pupils, Tim Watts has been active in promoting student composition in and around Bedford through a series of Composing for... workshops designed to help GCSE and A'Level music students by focussing on how to write for particular instruments and to provide opportunities for new works to be tried out. In the summer term of 2006 he worked with seven- and eight-year-olds from four local schools on a project based on the relationship between music and birdsong: the calls of blackbirds, robins, skylarks, song thrushes, nightingales and owls formed starting points for the children's own pieces of music which they performed to each other in a final concert. Here they were joined by pianist, Matthew Schellhorn, who introduced a spellbound audience to pieces from Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux based on the songs of birds they had got to know, as well as some unfamiliar ones from the south of France. Subsequent projects have included working with upper school pupils at Samuel Whitbread Community College in Shefford to compose a fanfare for the visit of The Queen to their school and a music and drama project for middle school pupils based on Kipling's Just So Stories.