I Liked This From #brooklynmuseum Too

Unicorn tapestries & plants at The cloisters

Weaving in Sounds

October 2016

Hello again! It's about time that I explained a bit more about what I have been doing on the theme of rural/work life past.

Connecting with the Autumn theme I begin sessions by creating a group soundscape of  travel - train and time travel. Tibetan Chimes and other instruments such as tone chimes are useful to set the scene for going back in time. You can also add in appropriate rhythm rhymes and words. Have a google for some poems if you want something to get you started :)

We follow the soundscape by singing our 'We're All Walking' song (courtesy of Emmie Ward) - this time singing that each person is ' walking back in time'. Playing the chime again signifies this. We have continued to use the turn taking activities that I described previously. Activities have included having a bowl of water and a measuring jug - scooping and pouring water  into the bowl, or ladling the water. Everyone gets a turn with the activity after we sing their name. I've also used popcorn instead of the water. Last week I used a short cardboard tube and everyone posted a small round piece of wood through it. (It could have been anything though - e.g. a conker or bead). Whereas the popcorn had been like grains of rural life/time, I said that posting the object through the cardboard tube was an indication of the industrial machinery that was to come. I know - I'm pushing it a bit!!!

I realised last week that soundscapes have started to take over the first half of the session. Following the turn taking activity we have moved into a second soundscape. At the moment this is a knitting/weaving soundscape. I start this section through playing a track by the band Capercaillie called M'loam. I find it creates a gentle contemplative atmosphere. To symbolise spinning wheels we roll and spin everyday objects on the floor - such as empty food containers, lids, cotton reels, wooden objects. You can roll the objects to someone or just randomly roll them, experiment and encourage others to do the same. I found a wool ball winder (from the Craft Workshop's weaving days) and we took turns spinning that around. It is a good visual object and makes a bit of a creak too.

This activity then led into a more active sound making soundscape, where we clicked knitting needles together, tapped wooden sticks and played thumb pianos. Last week my colleague and I found some tapestry forks with metal prongs and some metal loom winders. Together they make a good guiro style sound.

The soundscape led into singing 'Yan Tan Tethera'. It is a song I learned from Aimee Leonard that she developed as part of the Yan Tan Tethera project with the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Listen to Aimee singing it here on Soundcloud. There are more songs and information about the project at the Yan Tan Tethera project link above. Yan Tan Tethera is a sheep counting system traditionally used by shepherds in the north of England. Read more about it on wikipedia. I think it is also used for counting stitches.

I started the activity by singing the low part of Yan Tan Tethera and unwinding the wool from a ball of wool so that gradually everyone was holding onto it around in a circle. I added different voice parts gradually (taking turns with the parts myself) and people joined in with whichever part they wanted. I didn't ask anyone to sing anything in particular and it seemed to happen naturally that people took different parts. It was also really helpful that the support staff present joined in with different parts too.

It would be interesting to experiment with colours and weaving movements and sounds as with the Yan Tan Tethera project. There is no Weaving Workshop anymore, however there are still looms in the Craft Project , which are used occasionally.

I think that is probably enough for now! More about the other songs we have sung in a future post!

Lovely article about the Crystal Palace Subway and the 'Inspired by the Subway Project' that I am taking part in. A lot of the volunteers have had oral history training sessions and a few interviews have already taken place. It is a great project to be a part of and I am looking forward to the development of it...

‘I wish I were a cat’ .... trying to follow the style of the book to create art works... either an origami cat/dog or cut out clothes and trees etc from origami paper.... Native English Speaker at a Vienna Primary School... 

Its Been a While

April 2017

I can't believe that is has been so long since I last updated this blog. I am still very much working in this field as a freelancer. It sometimes happens that energies need to be transferred away from things like blog writing. In my case it has been the fact that I have been taking on new work and therefore as well as this new work involving new planning and making and practising - it has also been a time of processing and reassessing what I do.

I have been feeling pretty ok about the work I have been doing in this area up until now. However, having taken on several pieces of new work at once I suddenly realised that I felt a bit of anxiety and I felt a bit like I needed to go back to basics.  I guess no-one really likes feeling stress, however, I see this time of reassessment as a positive thing in the long run. It is important to discover what essence new work will take on for example in terms of needing to work out a new sense of flow for sessions and also to have a feeling of humbleness in the light of meeting new people, getting to know them and what they enjoy.

So what work have I taken on? I have started to work at the National Maritime Museum (NMM) as one of the new SEND Facilitators, trailing new sessions for children who attend special schools. It is called 'Sensory Seas' and involves children becoming explorers at the NMM. I have also led a couple of sessions on behalf of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). These sessions have been  short music and storytelling sessions for two groups of children at a special school. The sessions have been based on English folk songs. I have also recently started leading music sessions at two residential homes for adults with learning disabilities. This week I will be joint leading the first of three sessions leading up to a performance of the 'Invisible Palace' 'Boundaries' project in Crystal Palace Park. We will be supporting L'Arche London to take part with other local community groups. Emmie and I are focussing on stories connected to The Great North Wood and Crystal Palace Park. Last but not least - I have been developing ideas for a couple of other local heritage projects! More to follow on those...

Where my final project started in earnest. On this trip to Crystal Palace Park with O, I'd been tweeting (for my previous project) as one of the Crystal Palace sphinxes and O seemed to be intrigued and interested in this. She wanted to go to the park and try and translate the hieroglyphs. We ended up making a video about the out trip and basically O just enjoyed hanging out by the sphinxes. It was as if she was at home there and as if she had a connection with them because I did. We visited again a few weeks later and a similar thing happened. I felt inspired in the connection that O made with the area and in the film she made (by directing me) and definitely got me truly thinking about using media to create some form of trail for engaging people... and audio in the main....

What a colourful museum in general :) & friendly & strict guards! I'm definitely one for immersive art I've noticed over time & love this 'Swoon: Submerged Motherlands' #activism #swoonstreetart

I'm doing #100happydays - I think I'm ok at noticing things and will try and make it more museum/career orientated, but with space for other happy things :) Doesn't mean my life will be all blue skies- but today is! I did feel a bit resentful/confused of/by the sudden sun these past mornings because I felt so tired but the sun has won me over today :)

Learning Disability Music Sessions

October 2016

My broad theme for my current term of sessions is Autumn and work songs. We have already had a few sessions and I thought it might be nice to blog a bit about what L'Arche is, how I got to the theme and what I have been up to so far. Read on to read more about L’Arche and my theme.

L'Arche London is a charity based in West Norwood, South East London. I have worked for L'Arche in various ways and for various lengths of time since first leaving University many years back! I first went as a summer assistant and never seem to have really left. The charity supports adults with learning disabilities to live alone, in flats and in larger houses.

The community also runs day services, which currently centre around a garden project and a craft project. L'Arche originates from France and started in London in 1977. The community was set up to give people with learning disabilities their own home and sense of community. Previously people with learning disabilities were living in impersonal and often unpleasant institutions. The history of the day provision is also fascinating as the founders realised that people with learning disabilities wanted (and many still do) to do real work, have a job and earn money. The history of the day provision and community could be a whole heritage project and is something that I'd like to consider while some early members of the community can still share their stories.

I didn't intend to write such a long introduction, however, L'Arche's past helped me decide on the theme. Work is at the heart of many songs old and new. I love folk songs and folk work songs are a plenty :) I thought it would be nice to explore some early songs about rural life as a starting point.

The early September sessions began with an Autumn theme and we have gradually moved into the rural and work theme. The sessions begin with an attention grabber and at the moment always include a soundscape, turn taking activity of some kind, voice warm up, songs and percussion instruments.

Autumn Theme

I will share a couple of examples of activities that have taken place in the sessions. The first attention grabber activity was shaking leaves in a large plastic box. I took the box around shaking it and offering others to shake it if they wanted. I did this before singing the welcome song. I didn't say anything at first and just walked past each group member shaking the leaves as a way of beginning the session. When creating the autumn soundscape we also experimented with comparing the sound of a smaller sized box to shake the leaves, shuffling the leaves in a different way and with hitting the bottom of the box to mimic walking in rhythm. We hit sticks together (twigs and  clapping sticks), snapped twigs, turned rainmakers, waved big leaves and shook sycamore seed bundles. We took time to listen to each of the sounds independently before adding them and experimented with loud and quiet/fast and slow and stopped suddenly to pause and listen to the introduction of a new sound. As well as the above sounds, one of these sounds was the dropping of an acorn or two to the floor, with pauses in-between. I built up different Autumn soundscapes over a couple of weeks. There are also quite a few sounds you can find online and of course can record your own if you want to add some real life sounds.

We then developed the theme by singing a song written by Emmie Ward called 'We're All Walking Along... (through the woods)', which I have used before in our Crystal Palace Park/London Wildlife Trust project. Even though there were up to 12 people with learning disabilities in the session, we took the time to sing it for everyone, while people had the opportunity in pairs to walk around the centre piece. At the end of singing a verse for someone, that person was given an acorn and could drop it into the large plastic box, which made up the centre piece. At the end I and then anyone else who wanted to - shook the box to a rhythm and heard the sound of all the acorns together.

Work Theme

I feel I have written way too much already! However, to give you a little taster of the work song sessions.... I continued the Autumn theme into the work theme. The attention grabber for the next session became the sound of pasta shaken in a box to recreate the sound of a train. This was an idea I learned from Coralie Oddy. Again you can experiment with the fast and slow/loud and quiet. The soundscape changed from travelling through the woods to taking a train and walking to work soundscape. As well as some of the Autumn sounds we also had some street sounds of bike bells and cars. Setting a regular rhythm was key here - and leaving space for others to take over and add to the rhythm. In the song part of the session we sung 'I've been working on the railroad' and concentrated on singing just part of it and everyone having a turn on the uke (instead of the banjo!) if they wanted.

The travelling back in time idea has become part of the current soundscape and you can use a tone chime of any kind to signal the going back in time. It was nice to intersperse the chime sound with the sound of the train and working on railroad. The turn taking activities (whilst singing 'We're all walking)  have since included dropping conkers into a bowl of water, ladling water and this week pouring corn with a measuring jug. I thought these all in some way represent time passing and link in with the autumn/rural theme. Today, I cornily said that pouring corn could be symbolic of the the grains from farming and also the grains of time!

More to follow on the work theme and in particular the knitting/weaving theme that is also part of the L'Arche history and rural history. I hope the blog entry has been of some interest and I have not pointed out the obvious.

As with all the work I am up to at the moment. I owe much of what I practice to inspiration from many people. Today's thanks are to Emmie Ward and Coralie Oddy. Emmie is a fantastic music teacher, with many years experience of teaching people with learning disabilities. I have learned so much from observing her music sessions and working with her on the Sound Tracks and Crystal Palace Projects. Coralie Oddy, I met through attending a Jo Grace Sensory Stories workshop and we started storytelling together for the Crystal Palace Project as well as Sound Tracks.

Sydenham Wood - had a lovely walk in the wood with the London Wildlife Trust - I'm a big fan of The Great North Wood so it was fantastic to not only hear and learn about the natural environment - but also to think about the no longer present victorian houses and gardens - see above the folly and the Lebanon cedar that appeared as a shrub in a picture from 150 years ago -  & the train track that once went through to the now bat inhabited tunnel - & the interconnected-ness of it all... enjoyed the rain though of course I treated myself to some cake and tea upon return.