Monday 18th July
Today found the dream team of myself, Liam and Pete in the office for the day due to Simon and Kayleigh being on FBT business elsewhere. The day was going rather slow until Pete happened upon a fantastic idea whilst making a coffee, why not use the P.A. equipment available to us to host “Firebird Open-Mic Nights”? The latter half of our morning and the most of our afternoon was spent discussing all manner of aspects around the open-mic; age of target audience, venues, format, marketing, potential problems and solutions etc. The upshot of the discussion was that we want to aim these music nights at under 18’s i.e. people who might not necessarily be allowed to play in pubs or licenced venues (where the majority of live music occurs) as we feel this demographic don’t often get the chance to perform publicly. Venue is going to be very important for this project, playing publicly for the first time can be extremely nerve wracking and can put people off performing full-stop. For this reason it is important to find a venue that is public enough to provide good exposure for the young artists, but not be too intimidating that it puts people off. After this discussion we decided to be fantastically annoying to everyone else in the office, taking out all the equipment to create an inventory, all the while in nerdy music gear conversation…musical small talk as Liam calls it.
Tuesday 19th July
With a torrential thirty minute down pour in Lincoln usually leads to the inevitable flash flooding occurred in the Monks around area of town the Croft Street community centre included...and unfortunately this was the case today, receiving a call from Croft Street we were informed the storage room where the other half of the county council’s Gamelan is kept had flooded. With this myself, Robin, Ross, Pete and Kayleigh dropped what we were doing in the office (not literally) and headed down to help move the equipment to a drier location. The roads on the way were terrible, and upon seeing the massive puddle at the centre’s car park we expected the worst. The reality wasn’t quite so dramatic, but considering that most of the Gamelan is made of wood and bronze it was imperative that we get it out of the damp as soon as we could. After half of an hour of hefting, heaving and hauling we had most of the set safe and happy in an upstairs room and so we left Croft Street and our day ended there.
Wednesday 20th July
More office work today, the time being divided up between consolidating our plan for the ‘FBT Open Mic) and planning for our ‘make n’ play’ style junk percussion programme for the Binbrook activity night. Whilst researching junk-percussion earlier in the month we stumbled upon a number of tutorials on how to build your own junk instruments. This set the cogs turning and we realised it’d great to put together a programme lasting over the summer holidays where we build instruments with the children at Binbrook activity night and create a performance piece so show to the staff and parents at the end of the holiday. Gary shall be coming in next week to help with the final planning and details and from there it will just be a case of acquiring materials to make stuff with.
Good headway was made on the open-mic proposition today, and after a chat with Marion Sander from IMPart a meeting has been set-up for next Tuesday to discuss the possibility of putting on a regular young musician’s night for them. The next stage is going be figuring out our marketing strategy; where and how to advertise, with the schools closed for the summer we have the challenge of finding an effective place to market towards our target audience, something that we’ll no doubt overcome!
For the evening I went to ‘Binbrook Activity Night’ solo (kindly aided by Liam giving me a lift there and back) as Pete was off rehearsing and doing musiciany type things. This provided me a great opportunity to not only to get more experience of doing music workshops on my own, but also to explore the connection built up with the children who regularly partake when Pete and I lead workshops there. Going in with an aim isn’t always the best thing to do but tonight I wanted to set myself a challenge and that was to get all of the children playing in time with each other and to a steady tempo. To do this I started out by just talking to the children about what words they associated with drumming and percussion, after many answers the word “timing” came up. Firmly yet not forcefully I impressed upon them the importance of staying in time and invited them to take up the challenge of holding a good steady rhythm. This process took some work, realising that they I hadn’t mentioned the key thing “listening and feeling” I got everyone to close they eyes and really listen to what they were doing and what everyone else was doing, once they were in time we stayed on the beat then asked them to remember that feeling . Going through this process seemed to make something click; previously we’ve had a battle at times to keep control of everything, but tonight it all worked. By the end of the session we migrated from using just sticks to sticks on washing up bowls, playing a game of pass the rhythm and letting the children explore their own rhythmic ideas too…by the end it was me who was being taught! After a good fourty minutes the session ended with my aim reached and exceeded, proof that sometimes you just to have a little bit of determination and a way of getting things across.
The Firebird Trust
The Stables, Wellingore Hall
Wellingore
Lincoln
England
LN5 0HX
The Stables, Wellingore Hall
Wellingore
Lincoln
England
LN5 0HX
01522 811229
No comments:
Post a Comment