Celebrating the AllStars Music project

The AllStars project is reaching an end with our mega-celebration, the Giant Jam, coming up on July 2nd.

What are we celebrating? We're celebrating
- hours and hours of live music played by amazing people with extra special powers
- establishing new friendships and connections
- a training programme that made us think hard about what we do and how it works
- some wonderful 'outreach' workshops and performances
- a chance to explore and reflect at the Listening Lounge sessions
- many surprising, fun, and serious moments
- all the volunteers and professionals who have given generously of their time and inspiration
- all the many individuals and grant giving organisations that support our work
- our partnerships with Wells Cathedral School, Spaeda, the Somerset Rural Youth project and Bath Spa University
- all the parents and carers who have supported all the young disabled musicians we work with

There is a lot more to say. This summer we'll be writing up our reports and evaluating the work. Everything we have learned from all the good people we've met along the way will help us to go forward and reach even more people, spread the music and see what is around the corner.

'a different outlook on improvising and listening to one another.....'

On Saturday we ran a training day - music leadership skills development. It was inspiring and fun to spend the day with a group of talented young musicians, who have an interest in community music and music therapy.

Days like this are rare enough -  and short, too - so we needed to get straight to the point. We wanted to talk, share, play, and explore concepts.

Being given the opportunity to share what you do begins with plenty of thinking. The idea was to explain what we do in our sessions, and why, and put some context on it all. We needed to cover all areas of interest, through doing as well as telling.

Between us we covered a lot of ground, from information on how the brain is affected by music, to receptive and expressive communication, to what happens to your listening ability when you only play for 50% of the time in an improvisation.

We asked everyone what they thought of the day - was it useful? Some comments...
- inspirational, invigorating, eye opening, educational
- very grounding, so much de-stressing - so warm and friendly
- a different outlook on improvising and listening to one another
- meditative, insightful, really fun
- cemented my want to be involved in community music and music therapy
- JOYOUS! - expressive, relaxed, informative, and personal in the sense that I felt as if I and other members of the group were expressing personal things through spontaneous music making
- I hope we can have future sessions like this!

We're already planning how we can offer more sessions like this. Thanks for coming, everybody.

Music leaders' development day - an opportunity

The AllStars team are running a FREE music leader's development day in Wells on March 18th.

This is for anyone with an interest in music leading and community music - come and learn some new ideas in a fun environment, and try some stuff out. The activities will be led by Russ Stanley, Alex Lupo and Jane Harwood.

We'll be sharing tips and ideas for good music leading, especially with groups with additional needs.You can do some leading, take notes, film, or just join in and play.


Bring a packed lunch and an instrument or your voice.

Venue : the Denning Room, Union St, Wells BA5 2PU
Date; March 18th
Time : 10.30 - 2.00

You'll need to book a place : email info@heartbeats.org.uk

Wells Musicircus

The Wells Musicircus on June 18th was something quite different for us - an outdoors performance, in the company of more than 500 performers all ranged around the beautiful Cathedral Green, with an estimated audience of between 2500 - 3000 people!

Not only did we enjoy playing, and audience participation, but it was a chance to hear some other music too. A great day.

Martina on tongue drum, Sophie on vocals

Mark on the Big Pan

listening to the music

ready to go!

Tom, Martyn. Josh

Josh on the tubes

Tom and Russ setting up

Beautiful! cellos right next to us

Wells Music Circus

This Saturday we'll be in Wells for the enormous, ambitious Music Circus. The city will be full of live music.

Please join us if you can - there will be some empty chairs and some spare instruments.

We'll be outside the Music School on the Cathedral Green, next to the Museum. Our slots are 11.15 - 11.30, and 12.10 to 12.25.

At 12.30 everyone involved will be singing 'All you need is Love' together, and then we're all having a picnic together on the Cathedral Green.

We'll have plenty of lovely instruments with us for you to play.

Partnership working

AllStars and the Heart Beats Music sessions are funded by Youth Music. We are a 'fund B" initiative, which means we are running several projects at the same time, that all fit together.

Our big aim is to bring all sorts of young musicians together (trained or not)  to experiment with sound and explore their love of music : all the music we play is original, new, and improvised - the shared product of a group of people.
Our core team and some volunteers have a range of learning disabilities and we believe, if things are right for them, then they're right for all of us.

To help us run our project, we have some partner organisations.
These are : Wells Cathedral School; Spaeda; Elmwood and Penrose Schools Federation in Bridgwater; and the Somerset Rural Youth Project (SRYP).

All of these partners are valuable to our work - they provide information, support, networks, help with recruitment, venues - and workshops too.

Tonight James Brookes from SRYP is bringing a team from his Rural Music Network, along with several drum kits, to lead a rhythm workshop.
They've been running kit sessions in Shepton Mallet and Castle Cary, and want to share what they do.

We're looking forward to this - a different way to play ourselves into the Easter break.
Last time James came to work with us it was awesome....  everyone enjoys to try something entirely new, and meet new people.
Let's hope there will be enough mini eggs to go round.

Fairfield Farm College

Thanks to the Fairfield Farm College folks for hosting an AllStars extra session last Thursday. It looks very calm in the photos but there were 35 young people coming and going over the course of the evening, where we investigated an eclectic mix of mind-expanding looped vocals, funky jam sessions, and a musical chill out.

Starting the session at Fairfield

You can see more pictures on the College website here.

Funky Fairfield

They don't know it yet, but the students of Fairfield Farm College who come to our Heart Beats music session tonight are in for a bit of funk ... and they get to try out some brand new AllStars instruments that have just come out of the box....

This isn't our first visit to Fairfield, and we expect to be welcomed and make some great music.
We'll be back in the spring, because the college have invited us to run a music day for their arts week.

 

It's great for our team to get out and about and run some outreach sessions like this. Of course it's a challenge too, meeting new people and getting something good to happen in just two hours, but we have a whole host of ideas up our sleeves, and lots of different ways to include people.

Running an integrated group.

Our group exists for young people with learning disabilities, but it's a bit more complex than that....
Over the years, we have always had student placements at our music sessions. We provide support and opportunities for young musicians to experience working within a mixed ability setting.

Vicky

It's also brought us into contact with some brilliant instrumentalists and singers who really do bring a sparkle to group improvisations.
We feel that through offering this experience we've helped young people make higher education choices, and perhaps see music differently.

Gemma

Gemma, who was with us for a year, says ... 'I've ended up going to do recorder and violin at Birmingham Conservatoire instead of computer science'. We asked Gemma if she'd be interested in coming back for some sessions : 'This sounds amazing!  I'd love to come back and take part in the sessions!'
With the AllStars project, we felt that we'd like to open out this opportunity and move towards running a more integrated group - bringing together people from different backgrounds, who have had different opportunities, but have a common love of music.

At the taster session

Our partnerships with Wells Cathedral School continues to grow, and we also now have a partnership with the Elmwood and Penrose Federation of schools in Bridgwater.
This year Wells Cathedral School have stepped things up a bit by agreeing to host our integrated music mentoring sessions - "The Listening Lounge" - which begin in September.
They will help us identify A level music students to join the AllStars groups, and we'll be joined by one of their Graduate Music Assistants, who will be at the school studying for a CME (Certificate of Music Education).

Taster session warm up games

At our tasters this summer so far we met have Bella, Ellie, Esther, Molly and Laura. Laura is from Frome and is interested in a career in music therapy ; Molly is a signed songwriter.
Bella, Ellie and Esther are A level music students from Wells Cathedral School.They're all brilliant and we hope they will all join the group!
Our team of music leaders realise we will have a challenge to meet everyone's needs - but that's what we exist for : that's inclusion. We've said we're all stars in this context, so we need to discover how that works, and what that sounds like.
We all have so much to learn from each other, simply by being in a room where we can work and play together, listen and respond on equal terms.
What will be fascinating will be to observe the outcomes of these two years of 'music education by encounter' that we have planned for the AllStars project.

making music with new friends.....

Playing music together is an age-old way to develop friendships.
Heart Beats aims to give young people physical, emotional and social confidence, whilst having a good time.
We do what we can to evaluate the success of this, but sometimes you get something come through that reminds you it's all on track.
Today I got sent this lovely spontaneous endorsement, a poster made by one of the group.
Making music with new friends....yes.

Heart Beats Sound Foundation festival - July 12th

Russ and Jane are running  Count Me In workshops at the Sound Foundation Somerset Music festival in Taunton next week.
Our workshops are especially for young people with disabilities and their families / circles of support.

The workshops are in the Brewhouse theatre, 11 - 3. (One morning, one after lunch)

You can find out more, and book a FREE place, by getting in touch with Spaeda : 01458 254 262 / 07976 118650, alice@speada.org.uk

There's lots of other music events happening too : www.soundfoundationsomerset.org.uk

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.

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 - 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.

Deserts!

At our last session lots of people said they wanted to do 'guitars' this time.

We've been thinking hard about this one ..... because Geoff said 'African blues' too... so tonight's theme is...
DESERTS!
 First off, African desert blues (thanks for the inspiration, Tinariwen)
 Then, some low down Tex - Mex musical dualling in a dusty desert landscape.
We're just loading up with every guitar we can lay our hands on, plus a big bag of plectrums.
Get out of my way, tumbleweed. Here we come.

Sound cloud - listen to our song

Here is a link to a Soundcloud recording of a Heart Beats jam - working on our song.
Lead vocals by Mark. Backing vocals by David.
https://soundcloud.com/heart-beats-5

Underwater themes

Great improvising last night! David put it really well:

'I loved playing the instruments and the drums and being in the water, the river, and making music like swimming under the sea. Yes.'

Themes

One great thing about being a music leader is that you get to work with themes. And because we're not bound to any curriculum our themes can be as diverse as we want - there's mileage to be had in all sorts of ideas -  and learning and fun too.
Themes of the week include :
journeys
colours
space jumps
spaceman dub
beginnings /endings
strange celestial roads .....

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.

Heart Beats - lots of new things coming up soon.

What some people may not know is that Heart Beats is a project in two phases. We're excited that when we come back from our summer break there will be lots of things going on in the Heart Beats universe!

We'll be starting our autumn sessions on September 13th - usual place (Wells Museum) and usual time (6.00 - 8.00). Don't forget to come if you're part of our gang - or, if you're not, but you'd like to join us, email info@heartbeats.org.uk for some information.

We'll be welcoming our new trainees too - Elin and Ros.

One session this autumn will be run by James Brookes, from Somerset Rural Youth project, who has promised us a rock band workshop. And we'll be going to Jame's project, Soundscapes, to run a  workshop for them.

This autumn we will be running a 'little Heart Beats' project at Critchill school in Somerset, to reach some new participants - this will be an after school club.

Next year we'll carry on. In 2013 we'll concentrate on helping our Heart Beats crew to take turns to lead the music.
So - when 'phase two' starts, we'll be taking Heart Beats out on the road. Next summer we can offer music workshops with our own Heart Beats music leaders, in schools and communities across the SW region. Do get in touch if you'd like to book a workshop or you want more information.