We can now confirm our Heart Beats CPD day is happening on Monday, September 17th at Wells Museum, Somerset. This day is called 'Lifemusic - creating community through music' and will be led by Dr Rod Paton.

Rod will show us that we can communicate through music because:

Everyone is musical

There are no wrong notes in music

Every sound has a meaning

Making music is an act of trust.

 

This will be a day of music, fun and exploration, with friendly people in an inspiring setting.

We have a limited number of places available at £30 for the day. People who may benefit from this day could include music leaders, educators who use music in their work, music therapists, and people who work in creative settings with young people and adults with learning differences.

Please email info@heartbeats.org.uk for more information.

 

Heart Beats in April

Can't wait to get together this evening, it's been a long time ..... Heart Beats are Go.

Heart Beats training day

Breaking news! We've booked top class music leader and creator of Lifemusic, Dr Rod Paton, to lead a training skillshare day for us - we'll have a few places to spare if you know anyone interested. The date will be September 17th, 2012, and we have the lecture room booked at Wells Museum. More to follow soon.

Heart Beats March 22nd

Loving the Heart Beats crew. Great session yesterday, highlights including an unaccompanied song from Daryl (go Daryl!), Charlie leading a piece on the new electric guitar, and some stunning instrumental skills from Iona on trumpet and Sophia on viola - beautiful.
Good to welcome James and Paul from Soundscapes too. Hope you enjoyed!
As Martyn said, 'it was fun in there.'

Soundscape

I've been visiting the Soundscape project in Woolavington this evening. Lots of lively young people down there!
James led an improvisation session, everyone learning riffs and then adapting them to make new pieces.
Looking forward to welcoming James to the Heart Beats session this week. The co-project work is really interesting.

In Leicester

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At the hotel in Leicester with the Openstorytellers crew, heading off for another exciting day at the conference.

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.

Heart Beats news

It's so great to be underway with this fabulous project - another fine session last Thursday.
Lots going on!
We're putting our evaluation strategy to the test, with a visit from our evaluator Nell to the session last week.
The trainees Iona and Sophia have had their induction session and are ready to rock'n'roll.
Musician in residence Declan is now a fully fledged team member. Thanks for the great song last week Declan!
I'm visiting our partner project SOUNDSCAPES to sit in on their 'improvisation' taster session next week.
We're organising our parallel mini-series of workshops which we hope will happen at Critchill school in Frome.
We're plotting and planning our Professional Development day which will happen in late spring / early summer. We've got our eyes on someone really good to lead this day, and there will be a few places for sale .... more info to follow soon.
And, last but not least, we're starting to wonder about how to spend out equipment grant from the Somerset Community Foundation. Mmmm - lots of nice things out there. Send us your ideas.
Russ wants : a steel pan...
I want: big fat chime bars....
What do you want?

Another guitar

And here's the Gretsch! This one's cherry red and sparkles.
Thanks again, Ellie.

lovely new guitar

Here's Russ trying out our new DanElectro guitar - thanks to Ellie for donating this to our project.
Is it lime green? beige? lemon yellow? whatever, it's got style, and sounds good too.