AllStars is ended - so what happened?

We're just finishing our final report to the funders of the main AllStars programme- the National Foundation for Youth Music. Without whom, none of this would have been possible.

 So - we wondered, what had we done? 
Lots and lots of music.... lots and lots of fun...lots and lots of learning. 
Plenty of new friends made along the way.
 

 The occasional party!

Here's some of the things we have reflected on : 

The programme was aspirational and to a degree experimental. 

We followed a community music model that was underpinned by therapeutic approaches, participation, and best practice in communication. We researched improvisation and free ensemble playing. We took musical risks and processed the outcomes.

We followed our programme plan carefully : it worked well. We extended our delivery thanks to local support. Increasing our pool of accessible instruments, we explored sensory approaches to music through offering ‘conventional’ instruments to people who had never had this opportunity before.

We brought people together who would never normally meet , allowing them to explore relationships through sound and structured musical activities that led to an increase in musicality, personal progression, and social interaction. 

We supplemented the education of a diverse range of gifted young musicians whose lives have been altered by the experience. 

We empowered individuals with complex learning needs, sensory impairment and autism, allowing them to participate playfully or with gravitas, leading others, and engaging on their own terms. We responded respectfully to all input and valued the unexpected. 

We worked diligently with our SEN volunteers and music leader, taking their lead and valuing their voice. – This at a time when ‘disabled music leadership’ is high on the agenda.

We shared knowledge with teachers, professionals and graduates. We gave advice on starting organisations, fundraising, and good practice; also, career guidance and mentoring support.

Our team have grown in expertise through co-working and skillshare. This is fully transferrable and affects all our practice.

We helped groups interact and find a group mind. We provided consulted opportunities for celebration and sharing, including a day of joyful partying at one of the most beautiful locations in the area.

We’ve seen music changes lives, takes us to places we wouldn’t otherwise go, and builds true communities of experience.

So - cheers everybody! Bye for now.

Sharing what we do

Doing our final planning for our music leaders development day this Saturday, we are reflecting on what we do and how we do it - and of course, why we do it.
The trick is to share that usefully with other people so that they will be inspired by it all.

We like running training sessions. It's worth acknowledging that our main funders, Youth Music, support and encourage CPD within projects.
It helps define what we do as a team, and what is unique about our approach.

There's a lot of interest in musical inclusion at present. Between us we've been working in this area for plenty of years. The privilege of wide experience gives us something worthwhile to add to the conversation.

some serious listening!

Here's some feedback from our last open training day

- fundamental, free, expressive, understandable
- what a great combination of theory and practice!
- amazing - I learned a lot. I learned, what is music.
- life affirming. It opened my eyes to a different type of work
- inspiring, motivational, therapeutic

If you would like us to come to you, in whatever setting, and deliver some training, do get in touch.

Dates for 2016

Thanks to our generous 'fund B' support from Youth Music, we are sailing right through this year with lots of music workshops.

We have dates booked up the summer break.
Venues and dates after that will be confirmed later.

AllStars East.
Heart Beats at the Lawrence Centre :

1. January 21st
2. February 4th
3. February 25th
4. March 10th
5. March 24th
6. April 21st
7. May 5th
8. May 19th
9. June 9th
10. June 23rd
11. July 7th

Listening Lounge in the Lawn Room, Wells Cathedral School :

1. January 14th
2. February 11th
3. March 17th
4. April 28th
5. May 12th
6. June 16th 

Outreach:
Our next outreach session is at Avalon School, Street on February 12th.
After that, we're at Fairfield Farm arts week on May 13th.
More to come.

AllStars West.
Dates for the sessions in Bridgwater are being confirmed.

2016

Plotting, planning - there's even a bit of doing, reviewing, improving.... the AllStars team are meeting this evening to get a feel for the New Year.

What's happening?
AllStars is in full swing ....
We've got training coming up : 'Joining In' on January 30th, which is run by us and is for associates, partners and other professionals ; and a CPD day especially for our team, with the wonderful Hugh Nankivell.

AllStars East is emerging from a seasonal break....
The Listening Lounge starts again next week, on the 14th.
Heart Beats music sessions start on January 21st.

AllStars West will see us back in Bridgwater exploring music education by encounter in our mixed sound sessions at Elmwood and Robert Blake College.

We'll be offering outreach sessions too, starting at Avalon School on February 12th.

If you'd like an outreach session to come to you, email us info@heartbeats.org.uk

We'll continue to ponder on what surprises us about music, and publish blog posts here and on the Youth Music network.
You can follow us on twitter too:  @HeartBeatsNews

Our funding from Youth Music will take us all through 2016, and on into 2017, when we plan something special to round up the AllStars adventure.

So - Happy New Year - and here's to a year of surprising and energizing sound.

Another thought provoking blogpost!

Co-incidentally (or not - perhaps it so 'now' it's actually no coincidence at all) Siggy Patchitt has posted a blog on the YM network about inclusion, and what we're calling integration.
After many years of doing this kind of work, it's great to see it on the agenda.

Recommended reading, anyway.

What we are aiming for is simple. It’s a world where these two things happen:

1. A project is set up so that anyone, no matter what their needs are, can access it.
2. A Music Leader walks into a room and is able to work with any individual, no matter what their needs.

- See more at: http://network.youthmusic.org.uk/learning/blogs/siggy-patchitt/dropping-pennies%E2%80%A6or-jigsaw-pieces#sthash.LSJYcWEX.

What we are aiming for is simple. It’s a world where these two things happen:

1. A project is set up so that anyone, no matter what their needs are, can access it.
2. A Music Leader walks into a room and is able to work with any individual, no matter what their needs.

- See more at: http://network.youthmusic.org.uk/learning/blogs/siggy-patchitt/dropping-pennies%E2%80%A6or-jigsaw-pieces#sthash.LSJYcWEX.dpuf

New post on the Youth music network

Count Me In have just put up a new blogpost on the Youth music network.

It's some thoughts about 'participation' and how tricky that can be to get right sometimes... and how everyone comes to music for a different reason, and just maybe leaves with a different benefit too.

This piece was inspired by a paper by Francois Matarasso, you can read that here.
He says some great things about impact and involvement.

Some new drums for our AllStars project

Thanks to Youth Music and Radstock Co-op we have been shopping ....and thanks to Ben of Ghana Goods for providing us with thirteen really beautiful, carefully selected, hand made new drums for our project, which begins next week, on June 4th.

coming soon ...

 

Heart Beats lives on! 

Hold your breath for our new project.....coming soon

The Heart Beats AllStars music makers.

REALLY PROUD to be able to put this logo on our work again.

THANK YOU Youth Music.

 

 

Heart Beats at the Rural Music Network, February 9th 2015

Heart Beats hero Mark J. has fund raised, organised and made the poster for this session.
All you have to do is book a place (0797457603, email jamesbrookes@sryp.org.uk) and turn up on the night. It's free!
Huge massive fun guaranteed. Come and meet up with your old friends. Warm your hearts in the middle of a cold winter!

Youth Music project .....

Once upon a time Youth Music funded us to start the Heart Beats project. We hoped it would be successful but we didn't expect it to be quite such fun!
Our support from Youth Music draws to a close, as we have now submitted our final report to them.


Count Me In wants to say thanks to them for making Heart Beats happen. And to our other funders and supporters.

We have worked with 144 young people with a range of needs since we began in January 2012.
During this time,we've been surprised, excited, amazed, fascinated and amused.... we've learned more from our participants than we would ever have expected.

Of course, the Good News is that we haven't finished yet - Heart Beats is up and running, and judging from our last session, more fun than ever.

Heart Beats at FosseWay School

Here's Emma and Geoff posing in front of the Heart Beats bunting. Day one of two days for Fosse Way School went well .... lots of engagement, good attention and interaction, and some excellent feedback from staff there.

Tomorrow, our workshop there is the final day of our outreach phase and the last workshop of our Youth Music funded project. What a journey this has been.
Amazing.

We're back in September thanks to some funding from the Big Lottery.

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.

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.

Somerset Sound Foundation

Just back from giving a presentation about Heart Beats at the Somerset Sound Foundation (music hub) event hosted by Spaeda at Great Bow Wharf, Langport - 'how do we get more children and young people into music?'
Ideally I would have taken the whole gang along and just played music! But, words, photos and film had to suffice. Great to get good feedback and especially inspiring to hear about other work going on across the county and region - including Actiontrack and Drake Music amongst others.
Giving this presentation has helped me to think clearly about Heart Beats and look back on what has been good practice.
We're now entering phase two with our first 'rehearsal' session with our core peer leading team - a step into the unknown, but a good one I feel.

Count Me In are taking part in a sharing event about 'musical inclusion'

We're pleased and excited to be involved in a sharing event,  where we will be talking about Heart Beats.
This event is called 'How can we get more children and young people into music'?
It's  a free event and parents, carers and youth workers are welcome - it's not just for music leaders.
On June 26th Jane and Alex will both be talking at a similar event, aimed at the more 'formal' music sector - such as schools.

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!

MUSE

I'm excited to have come across the MUSE project yesterday whilst doing my 'other' job.
Here's their website
They seek to ' empower young, disabled musicians by helping them challenge any barriers to musical participation that they may experience. '
They are working across the SW region with Youth Music funding at the moment.
Really exciting stuff.

Early years music

It's great to see Frome early years music leader Willow Harwood has been awarded some funding for instruments through a Youth Music initiative.
Willow contributes her bit of wisdom to an online resource on Youth Musics' Network blog. Click here for the Youth Music resources page.
Some of the 'top tips' hold good for our work too. 
Willow says "Ensuring a mix of adult led and child initiated music making builds confidence in even the youngest of music makers."

In our project, we make music with young adults, but we value scaffolding and sound support as the foundation for confidence building too.
Heart Beats really appreciates the funding that enables us to have a good, solid team of music leaders, trainees, support worker, volunteer and musician in residence .... it's a great way to work.

Interim reports done!

Yes, all those rainy days of form filling, evidence gathering, teeth grinding, spreadsheets, tea drinking and general evaluating have been bundled up and submitted in one big information cloud to Youth Music..... phew.
Cheers, team.