Unit 59 - Music in the community

Friday 4^th May

Today I had my first meeting with Kevin from Reaction Music to discuss the workshop which will be happening in a few weeks time. We had a discussion about how the workshop is going to take shape and what it is going to entail. I have proposed a plan for the music workshop.

The rationale, aims and outcomes

The rationale for this project is to deliver a music workshop to visually impaired young people.

The aim of the project is to allow children and young people with a visual impairment to get involved with community music as this may not be accessible to them within their school.

Children will benefit from the workshop as they will develop both musical and transferable skills which they will be able to use in other situations. It will allow the children to build their confidence, self-esteem and communication skills. The project will have a long term impact on their lives as it will give them more confidence within a mainstream school setting. The project will also give the children and young people an opportunity to meet with other visually impaired young people.

Many different people will benefit from the project. Of course, the visually impaired children and young people who will be taking part in the workshop will benefit the most from these sessions. Also, the parents of these children will benefit as they can see their children participating in fun, accessible workshops. This may even go on to benefit the child within their mainstream school environment as the workshop will develop their confidence which can be transferred to this setting after the workshop.

Funding

There are many organisations/charities that we can apply for funding from. These include Arts Council England, The National Lottery Fund, Children In Need, etc. I have carried out some research into applying for funding and I have presented this in my research blog.

Session content

In some of my recent lectures, we have carried out many different drumming exercises and activities which we could use during the workshop. All of these activities involve a djembe and would be great ice breaker activities to ease the clients into the workshop.

We have had a discussion about how the workshop is going to run. We talked about different possibilities for the main activity within the workshop. It is very important to consider the age of the children we will be running this workshop for because if the activities are quite complex, it may be hard for young children to follow these. Here is an outline of how we are hoping the workshop will run:

·      Introduction – introduce yourself, outline what the workshop is going to involve, explain any rules, get to know the names of the clients

·      Ice breakers – small activities to get the group warmed up ready for the main activity. This will include simple rhythms with a combination of getting to know names and volume control.

·      Break – a 10-15 minute break to make sure that the children aren’t getting tired or bored

·      Main activity – putting together a song in which the group will be split up into different groups which will all come together to create a group piece. We will be working with the group on the song ‘Shape of you’ by Ed Sheeran. This is a song that the group should all know. We will also have a few backup songs just in case the group do not know ‘Shape of you’.

Something that we need to be aware of is that we won’t be sure on how much sight the children will have until they arrive at the workshop. There are many activities that we had thought of during the preparation process but they would not be suitable for visually impaired children. One thing that we have had to consider very carefully is how we are going to control the volume of the group. We have talked about using a whistle so, for example if you hear 4 blows on the whistle then that tells the group to stop playing/singing. These instructions would be explained at the start of the workshop.

Delivery of the workshop

The workshop will be delivered in the Performance Studio in The Chapel Arts Centre at The Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford. I will be leading the workshop alongside Kev from Reaction Music.

Resources

These include djembes, a microphone, guitar, chairs and percussion instruments. We have all of these resources at the college already.

Evaluation

At the end of the session, evaluation forms will be handed out to the clients so we can find out what they enjoyed and learnt from the workshop. This feedback can then help us to improve music workshops in the future. We will ensure that we have evaluation forms in accessible formats for the children and also some ordinary sized print ones for parents if they would like to fill one in on behalf of their child.