Monday heralded the start of my fourth week with The Firebird Trust. Over those four weeks Peter and I have learnt the ropes and thrown ourselves into what has already proved to be a varied and rewarding job. This diary will hopefully serve to inform you; the supporters, staff, trustees and anyone else who takes interest about the week to week life of a Music Practitioner at The Firebird Trust!
Monday 11th April
With the varied nature of the job Mondays are invariably (and maybe counter-intuitively to some) the most exciting day of the week, for it is the day of the week where we find out which endeavours we will be embarking upon. The day started with the now weekly FBT staff meeting, a point at which we discuss what we have been doing over the past week, what has prevented us from carrying out tasks and what we plan to be doing with our week ahead. The main case in point from this meeting was that of documenting what we at Firebird are up to on a week to week basis, and hence the diary you are reading now!
An interesting topic of conversation that came up during the meeting was that of finding out how we can make what we do different or stand out to similar organisations in the region. Peter and I were set the task to conduct research based on three main points:
- Visibility: how visible the organisation is to the public domain, how well known they are and on which mediums they are visible.
- What and where? : what the organisation does i.e. what their programmes consist of, where they conduct what they do i.e. region/area covered.
- How they convey what they do: the way in which their activities are conveyed to the public i.e. twitter, facebook, youtube, blogs etc.
The findings of our research revealed that The Firebird Trust had the means to be extremely visible within the public domain having; youtube, twitter and facebook book accounts along with its own internet domain but that these means could be used a lot more effectivley, something that was in part discussed during the mornings meeting. The result of this was a consensus amongst us all that a more effective and regular use of the media outlets available to the trust was needed, calling for more in the way of; video documentation (performances and evaluation), images (photographs of our work) and write ups (diaries, blogs, mailing lists).
Tuesday 12th April 2011
A stark contrast to the previous day in the office; Tuesday was all in all a very practical day. Convening at Liam Robinson’s house/studio in the morning we set about finalising the exercises and format of “Kev & Pete’s Beat Workshop Pt.1”. The morning proved to be a successful one, bringing shape and flow to our workshop as well as establishing a rough idea of how long we wanted to focus on each exercise (something to be completely re-thought the next day, but more of that to come!).
The second half of our day at Liam’s also proved to be a fruitful one, having had several incarnations of our body percussion performance piece we set about re-working, re-jigging and re-evaluating, resulting in something altogether more refreshing. Clocking in at little over two minutes the piece is designed to inspire, baffle and demonstrate to our workshop participants the possibilities of making music with few instruments or indeed no instruments at all…barring the spoons of course. Having spent the past few weeks in the company of Liam, a veritable expert on folk arts, we have come to appreciate and understand the joy in making music with minimal means; this revelation has however come with its frustrations, the bones being possibly the hardest instrument I’ve ever attempted to learn!
Wednesday 13th April
Judgement day! Wednesday was in all honesty the day I was dreading/excited about the most, for this was the first time we were to unleash our workshop on real people! Hyperbole? Maybe so, but it proved to be the most informative days’ work so far at the trust.
Our morning took us to Leadenham village hall where along with Liam and several kind volunteers, we ran through each section of our workshop, pausing for feedback and reflection. Its one thing to plan something out and have a vague idea how it’s going to go but it’s another to actually carry out said plan. After running the workshop through several issues/considerations as areas to address and improve upon:
- Clear, concise communication of instructions.
- Leadership: dividing up which one of us are going to lead which section of the workshop.
- Creating accessible characters/personas and making the workshop more theatrical and engaging.
- Transitions; ensuring that the changeover between different activities is smooth and timely.
- Variety; ensuring that just the right amount of time is spent on each activity.
- Health and Safety: ensuring that the participants are not hurting themselves when playing each part of the body.
- Behaviour management: being aware at all times of participants who are not concentrating, being disruptive or having difficulties with the tasks.
All in all the experience was informative and fun. The next stage is to re-develop workshop pt.1 with all of the considerations raised during our trial run and think about workshop pt.2 which will introduce the drumsticks and how they can be used in a basic way to create rhythms, the end goal being to create a workshop that builds and develops in an entertaining and engaging way, enabling the participants to have a new and fulfilling musical experience.
Summary of the week
Evaluation and reflection have been the two main themes of the weeks. We successfully evaluated the The Firebird Trust’s visibility to the outside world, identified the methods of conveying what the trust and its staff do and how best to use the communication resources available to us. We also attained invaluable feedback on mine and Pete’s music workshop and are now armed with a clear plan on how to take the workshop forward and what the next steps will be.
Don't forget to check out our video blog!:
Kevin Howden - The Firbird Trust (Music Practitioner)
The Firebird Trust
The Stables, Wellingore Hall
Wellingore
Lincoln
England
LN5 0HX
01522 811229
To find out more about the trust, please visit our homepage!
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