Avalon School

Look! we've just found a page on Avalon Schools website, with photos of our visit there last February. What a great day that was... see their report here:
HeartBeats at Avalon

Rowdeford school outreach session

When we ran our training for professionals earlier this year, we offered participants the opportunity to book an outreach session to see our work in practice.
Thanks to Sarah Curwen, last week we visited Rowdeford School in Wiltshire to run a morning of music on the very last day of the school year.

What a lovely place! We enjoyed meeting everyone, staff and students -  what a warm welcome. We enjoyed walking round the walled gardens, and especially liked the room we were in - the school arts centre.

The three music sessions were fun. Although we followed the same plan for each one, they developed differently as we followed the amazing suggestions and ideas of the young people.

Staff said it was 'perfectly pitched to the levels of our students and a delight to see and hear them all participating'.
They thought 'it was great the way all of the student's ideas were combined' and it was 'excellent fun for students (and teachers!)'.
'Fantastic - everyone completely engrossed!'
'Thank you for providing such a rich musical experience for us all.' 

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

How do we know what we do is good enough?

It's not unusual to come away from a session feeling significantly better than when you first entered the building - but how do we actually capture that feeling? Those moments?

Evaluating our work is something that is a constant, ongoing process.
We observe, film, photograph, check that we're on track with aims and anticipated outcomes.

Sometimes it's easy, especially when you know people, to see change or capture 'those moments'.
When you're out and about working with new people, the challenges are more complex.

Recently we ran an outreach workshop with 32 students at a local residential college.
We felt it had been a good day, and we asked staff to give us some feedback.

Staff gave us top marks for meeting needs and getting the groups to work together.
What we did was 'age appropriate' ; 'engaging'; and 'easy to follow'.

The sessions were good!  We had everyone playing :
 'It was amazing to see two students who are normally noise sensitive smiling and really enjoying the session'

It was  'Excellent and brought something out in students that would not normally join in'

and, generally ' I loved it on a personal level and the students really enjoyed it – Thank you it was really fantastic.'
 ' Brilliant!'

Russ and Ben in the mood for a tune or two

Some quick tuning up before sessions

All good then.

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.

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.

Fiveways School

Geoff, Jane, Russ and Alex had a brilliant day at Fiveways school in Yeovil today.
Fiveways are having their creative arts week at the moment.

Today it was music ...We ran a music session for every single class in the school! It is really rewarding being invited in as visiting artists.

And this is the card that the students made for us.

Thank you, Fiveways school.

They have given us some really nice feedback.

• The pace of the session was appropriate for the different abilities for the group
• All students actively participated – all levels
• The students clearly enjoyed the whole session, were engaged and stimulated throughout
• Signing alongside verbal instruction, students given individual time as well as being part of the group
• Lovely communication and interaction!
• All students really engaged and responsive – lots of excitement and smiles
  
• AllStars was fantastic – all students were catered for brilliantly
• Excellent response to an excellent medium! Super engagement. 10 mins longer (i.e. 40 mins) would have been even better
• WONDERFUL
• Great fun, really enjoyable
• Fabulous!
• Loved it – can you come back again
  
• They all loved it – 100% engagement!
  

Outreach team

The outreach workshops took us all out and about, beyond the comfy cocoon of our usual room.
Fortunately, we were able to support each other and have some fun ..... here we are practicing our 'Tibetan applause' - as you do....

Hearts, Beats, Music

Wow, what an amazing team!
Its been a total joy working with you all .....
Geoff
Russ
Alex
Ben
Mark
Martha
Emma
Leah
Elin
Ros
Iona
Sophia
Declan

Here's a wish for lots more music, for all of us, later.

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.

Fairfield Farm College

Wow, what a brilliant evening playing music at Fairfield Farm College - thanks Geoff, Mark, Alex, Ben, Russ ..... and all the Fairfield Farmers crew.


Heart Beats hit the spot!  what a joyful load of spontaneous music-making. Fun with reggae and funky beats, gentle improvisation, conducting, movement and games.
Thanks to everyone at Fairfield for making us welcome, giving us cool drinks, showing us the beasties (cute baby cows), chatting, helping set up and pack away.
Most of all, thanks for your music, singing and enthusiasm. 




O. said 'Thank you for coming and playing music with us here - will you come back? We don't get this opportunity often.'
J. stood up and said 'I'm leaving this college - and so are lots of my friends.' So, it was an important moment. We hope everyone will remember the great party we had together  - the Heart Beats crew won't forget it in a hurry, that's for sure.

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.

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!