Heart Beats is moving to a new home

We have some news! From the end of September we are moving our Thursday sessions (Heart Beats club, and the Listening Lounge) from the Lawrence Centre to a new venue in Wells.

This venue is Cedars Hall at Wells Cathedral School.

Cedars Hall

This is great news, for two reasons.

Firstly, Cedars Hall is a brand-new state of the art teaching and learning centre built with music in mind. Building the hall has been a long standing project for Wells Cathedral School, and now it is ready to be used.
The hall has wonderful facilities and is accessible, designed with acoustics in mind and - of course! - perfect for playing live music. We shall be on the first floor, in a teaching space with adjoining rooms and observation space for break-out opportunities.

Secondly, the move brings us into a closer partnership with Wells Cathedral School.
Over the years we've offered supported training placements for Wells students, and more recently, staff as well. This has grown to become a vital part of our work as the 'AllStars ensemble' explore improvisation together with the Heart Beats crew, our core group of learning disabled musicians - it's a creative hothouse.

A professional development day with an integrated group

Wells C.S head Elizabeth Cairncross says 'we know that music and the performing arts must be inclusive, not exclusive. With Cedars Hall we will be able to expand our community programme, our teaching, our staff training, and our partnership work.'
Inclusion is everything for us. We do believe that everyone is musical, and that music can change lives.
Most of our group live in the Wells area.The school recognise that Cedars Hall is a significant community asset for Wells and the South West. We're proud to be included.

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.

Partnerships for the AllStars project -working with Somerset Rural Youth Project again

We've got some support from local organisations for the AllStars Project.

James Brookes from the Somerset Rural Youth Project has given us a lot of help and support to run Heart Beats.

Now James and SRYP are going to help us run AllStars too.

Their Rural Music Network sessions in Castle Cary and Shepton Mallet are in our area so we are going to create an 'exchange of opportunities' for young people in both projects, which are both funded by Youth Music.

James says 

I look forward to supporting Count Me In with their very exciting new music project bid, that offers opportunity for two Youth Music funded organisations to continue to work together. Developing new and exciting methods of making music accessible in Somerset, while at the same time enhancing support for one another in the process.

One part of our partnership is that Alex, Geoff, Jane and Russ are going to work with Heart Beats star Mark J to run a series of 'Smoozic' (Shepton Mallet Music!) sessions together - everyone is welcome. These are integrated sessions for everyone, of all abilities and ages.

More news soon.

Day service providers forum

Here's an event which may be of interest to any of you based in Mendip, Somerset.
(We can't help thinking that's the Heart Beats crew up there on the top right......)

We're not a day service but we do offer extra curricular fun and learning opportunities for all the young people this event is aimed at. We'll be there if you want an informal chat on the day.