School workshops in Bridgwater

Phase two of our Youth Music work is in full swing now. Today we were at Elmwood School in Bridgwater, running workshops for their enrichment day. Sadly Penrose School couldn't join us as planned, as Ofsted had suddenly arrived!
Elmwood is a friendly school, we had a great welcome and lots of cake.
All the students joined in, concentrated hard, and made some good music.
Emma and Geoff came with us, to help lead the workshop. A student said that Emma's conducting was 'magic', and someone else said Geoff's drumming was the best thing of the day. So well done you two.

This second phase of our project can be quite challenging as we are in new situations with young people who may have complex needs, but don't know us at all.
Part of the big strength of our 'usual' Heart Beats sessions is the chance to work regularly as a team. Now we have to work with our strengths in one-off situations.

What is working well is our ability to help people improvise and really explore group music making.
Rod Paton calls this 'communitas'.
Thanks to a really brilliant team, sunny days like today will remembered for some while to come.

Next Monday we are going to Threeways School in Bath to work with primary children.