Babyhead and Zone Club at the Cheese and Grain

What a great time we had last night, thank you Babyhead, Zone Club, and FMU.
Caught a few glimpses of the Heart Beats crew bouncing around in the crowd.
Why can't all gigs be like this? Let's move things forward to more inclusive times.... more fun for everyone.

Oh, and that Alex wasn't bad on the drums, eh?...

Outreach hits FMU!!!

Ears still buzzing and heart still thumping after an awesome music-and-sound-charged start to our outreach season at Openstorytellers 'FMU' club.
Thanks for hosting guys!
Great welcome, nice dancing, good playing.
Thanks to our awesome team - Martha, Geoff, Mark, Elin and Roo - great leading. It's a joy to work with you all.

Next up : after shcool club at Fosseway school this week.
Session at Threeways School in Bath.
Session at Penrose School in Bridgwater.
Two sessions at Fosseway school holiday club.

Heart Beats will be at FMU (Friends Meet Up) in Frome on May 11th.
We're running a two hour music workshop based on improvisation, sound

sculpting,communication and fun.
www.openstorytellers.org.uk

Heart Beats - Phase two

Some people have been wondering if they have missed some Heart Beats sessions at Wells.
To make things clear:
Open sessions have stopped now. (We hope they will start again in the autumn - we're waiting for funding news.)
We will have 'open doors' at the Heart Beats project party, on July 4th, 6 - 8 at Wells Museum.
Meanwhile, from now until our Youth music funding ends after the summer, we are running the second phase of the project. This is where we go out and run 'outreach' sessions in schools, holidays clubs and so on.
The first of these is at FMU (Friends meet up) in Frome, on May 11th.
- see www.openstorytellers.org.uk for details.
 So - if you go to FMU, see you there!
Watch the blog for more news about Phase Two.

After school clubs

Some of our Youth Music funding is for outreach sessions. This term we are reaching new people .... visiting some schools to make music with after-school clubs.
On January 29th and February 5th we'll be at Critchill Special school in Frome.
Count Me In hero Ben Waller will be co-leading these sessions. Ben already runs a music project at Critchill, the Loops project.  
We'll also be working in Bridgwater with Alex Lupo, and in Frome with Openstorytellers and their FMU club.
Other plans are afoot to reach more new people ..... email info@heartbeats.org.uk if you'd like us to come to you!

Embrace Create Connect

Russ and Jane have just returned from the learning disability arts conference in Leicester - Embrace, Create, Connect.
We went there in a team with our friends from Openstorytellers.
This was a really well organised event - stimulating, challenging, friendly, varied, exciting. We've spoken to so many people and connected with lots of ideas. There's a lot of dance and theatre-based stuff out there : not enough music, though - we'd love to run a presentation if this event happens again.
Outstanding for us was the crew from Sage Gateshead, representing their programme Community Music Sparks. This is a picture of Andrew and Michael, who had us dancing in the aisles.
Our dream is to pay them a visit - see their team in action, share some ideas, get some top class CPD.
Is Gateshead a long way from Somerset? mmmm.