New Beginnings

Well its been almost a year since I last blogged and the new beginnings have not stopped coming!

Part of the reason the PGCE is so challenging is because it is a year of constant new beginnings and change, and no sooner do you get settled in one context and build the relationships and begin to understand the expectations, than you are back to square one starting a new placement or back in university building new timetables and relationships etc. Over the course of ten months, I worked in three school placements - all of which had very different approaches to developing community and children, delivering curriculum and indeed very different expectations of and attitudes towards student teachers. In between those three placements were a wide range of sessions within the university - every tutor desperately trying to enthuse and demonstrate the importance of their subject or discipline whilst cramming in as much as they could about what you needed to know about that subject alongside how to teach it, often within the space of two, four hour sessions. Hats off to those who tried and succeeded at getting their core message across. Fortunately, I felt very lucky to receive really good tuition in both maths and english, delivered by two tutors who were dedicated to finding engaging and creative approaches to teaching and enjoying their chosen subjects - this kept me going!

So the plan is to share a little more about my placements in future blogs - particularly the elements in which I was determined to continue using my experience of using creative approaches to teaching the wider curriculum - including using disciplines which I would not consider myself an expert but have often challenged other teachers to test out within various projects across the years! In particular, I wanted to discover whether it was possible to develop creative projects without the creative partnership infrastructure of additional staffing time, specialist input and budget for resources!

In addition to beginning (and concluding - yey!) my PGCE, I began married life just over a year ago -and we had the most wonderful time exploring New Zealand together on our honeymoon in December. It is simply one of the most stunning environments I have ever been to and I cannot wait to return one day! In the meantime, needless to say, I collected tonnes of resources and made a couple of contacts with a view to using New Zealand as a focus for cross curricular teaching at some stage - the possibilities are immense for every subject area! (Sorry Phil but thanks for being so patient on our holiday!)

And now the new beginnings keep coming as I await the imminent arrival of my son and develop a new approach to working that enables me to keep working within the arts and education sectors as I cannot imagine working in one without the other.

Time to create -the sequel!

Looking back at my previous post, 'Time to create!', I'm delighted to realise that I managed to fulfil all of the elements I posted as potential areas of work - and in fact have had a fantastic time doing so, and have learnt a fair amount along the way. No wonder my blog posts have been few and far between this term! Once again, I'm at a point where I have space to reflect and as I move into a new phase of life I am keen to have a record of all that I achieved this term. I've found it really useful to be able to look back at my posts since I began as a record of both my learning and achievement - each post triggering new ideas and alternative approaches to current work/projects.

Much of the work listed deserves individual posts and I will endeavour to do that over the next few weeks but in the meantime, a few quick updates!

The Brighter Sound Practitioner Network - which had its own post in April, is developing nicely! We had a follow up meeting in July to consolidate the network's identity and plan the route forward as the message about the network is sent out to schools... a dedicated website/blog is due to appear very soon and the first round of flyers have been distributed!

Second - It turned out to be a wonderful experience being 'a hummer' for the sound installation 'Taken' at Clitheroe Castle. Initially it was a very moving experience as it was about connecting/communicating with music at the point where words are not enough. It was also slightly daunting when I realised that my conversation with the composer, Ailis Ni Riann, which had been quite personal was to be part the documentation around the piece's creation viewed by the public; and it was great to finally hear the piece at it's launch event in June before taking part in an interview for Woman's Hour on Radio 4 - what a coo for Ailis, Mid Pennine Arts and the partners of the Contemporary Heritage programme! I'm looking forward to delivering a related workshop with Julie Miles for MPA in the next few weeks.

And third of the brief references is my wedding! Phil and I had a wonderful time but the preparation was no small undertaking! All in all a fab term!

Hurray for Social Networking Sites and Creative Procrastination!

Its been a while since I last blogged - combination of factors, involving busy-ness, lack of something tangible to say and also an awareness that it has been a difficult time for many of my colleagues within Curious Minds and its wider network who have been grieving the loss of Chris May - a significant leader within culture and education across the North West which has left myself and I suspect many others, simply lost for words.

So - why hurray for Social Networking Sites? - well first of all it has been a space for significant support and connection throughout the last few weeks but also it greatly improved the weekend just gone! As a direct result of posts from a variety of people I had the information and enthusiasm to get out of the house in my 'down time' and go to three very inspiring and diverse events:

1 - Friday evening was a launch event for GMMAZ, Brighter Sound's first album, Living To Our Habitat - a really great example of youth music and creativity!
2 - Squeezed into Saturday morning a quick visit to Manchester Art Gallery to catch the end of the exhibition by Anish Kapoor: Flashback before a long but enjoyable day of shopping and dress fittings (planned long before the urgent gallery visit!)


(Sitting on the steps of the gallery with my Dad before it opened for the day!)

3 - Dashed from a full day of selling jams and chutney's for our friends at Reedy's Naturally to the Lake District to experience the awesome Harmonic Fields organised by Lakes Alive!

Its only a very rough cut on a basic mini cam but this explains far better than I can just how awesome Harmonic Fields was - and why it was worth every second of driving behind slow slow drivers on a Sunday evening without much idea of why or what we'd experience!....



Its difficult to discuss my experiences of each of these events because they were simply beyond words but all hugely inspiring. Simply to say that I am now ever more keen to share those experiences - by trying to build connections between such high quality youth work and my local community and my realisation that every school should have a 'harmonic field' and yard of experiential sculpture inspired by Anish Kapoor and other greats! In a time of looming evaluation deadlines it feels all the more important to celebrate our inspiration and reason for starting it all in the first place!


PS. Thanks to Phil for the photos!

Product of play...

Show your working...

How often do adults show their working? i.e. the process which leads to a complete product/ successful project etc.

Increasingly creative practitioners are asked to reflect on their processes which lead to products (without necessarily showing it, although documentation often happens for other reasons) but in primary schools children are regularly asked to show their work. Why?... its scary!

I suppose that is the aspect which I find most engaging about this whole blogging thing- I'm creating time outside of 'drive time' to explore my own 'workings' and challenging myself to go further in my thinking and delivering; but I also have the opportunity to understand how other people reach their 'products' through their own blogs which is fascinating. This morning I have been playing with photoshop - just because I can!.. its fun to work out how to do knew things and its also a way to enjoy creating new pictures out of old favourites...

original photo from Vienna...



I'll be honest - I quite like this photo and have no problem sharing it. I'm no photographer so any photos I like I can be proud of!...

so now I play with the image...



Not incredibly original - mixture of Van Gogh style colours and Warhol style 'posterizing' but still fun to explore. I've wanted to play like this ever since I saw the 'Refuge' exhibition by Yasmin Yaqub at Mid Pennine Gallery a few years ago. - it was a truly inspiring exhibition (still inspiring me five years later) which led to a great education project working with Daksha Patel and Lord Street Primary School but its only now I have got round to playing in my own time!

Another one?...



This time I've explored more 'realistic' colours but still using a fairly limited palette - not unlike the poster paints a child might use. You may notice that there's more detail this time though - its a smidge more finished. I've zoomed in to fill in smaller elements of colour as well as taking the time to separate the person and give him his own colour so he doesn't get lost in the background. As I started to consider sharing these images on my blog I couldn't help but try and make it a little bit better!

So - I guess that's why we endlessly encourage children to show their work. If its ok to challenge children in this way though - surely we should at least recognise that its not always comfortable to share our work, make sure that there is a genuine reason and a safe place for doing so - and maybe challenge ourselves in the same way from time to time! Perhaps adult work should be alongside children's as we look along the walls full of displayed work in schools?!

PS... a final image from the 'Inspired by Refuge' project which I referred to earlier. Where digital media merged back into 'real/tangible?' visual art using collage of photographs, newspaper cuttings, charcoal and pencil drawings...

Time to create!

It seems obvious but the temptation as a practitioner is to fill up the diary till you can't see the space from one term to the next but having finished work at Sing Up last week I am LOVING the space to reflect, relate - with impromptu coffees and lunches - well overdue chat that leads to creativity and as a result I can't help but buzz with excitement about the work ahead next term.

Everything needs more planning of course but for once it is good to let ideas germinate - here are some of the things I'm hoping to develop next term...

1. Tauheedul - last term to really consolidate the last two years of learning and build resources which the school can progress with next year. Currently writing an arrangement of Yusuf Islam's Nasheed - I look, I see for that. Tempted to see if we can link into next project at Clitheroe...

2. Contemporary Heritage at Clitheroe Castle - Mid Pennine Arts have commisioned Ailis Ni Riain to create a sound installation using humming and I'm quite excited to be one of the twentyish people who will be recorded humming this Friday. Depending on the outcome I'm really keen t1o then explore how school groups can engage in the installation and create their own humming composition!

3. Marsden Primary - continuing to develop my learning around South Asian song and building it into collaborative storytelling process with Jackie Harris, school staff and hopefully others! This will involve lots of fabric, a labyrinth with space for children to experience individual time in a reflective space , variety of musical instruments, possibly a tea party and hopefully a trip to the beach!

4. Early Years Network - facilitating training days and residency observations for MusicLeaderNW who have developed a Workforce Development project to accompany the Music Boxes Project which is all part of and funded by MIF.

5. Brighter Sound Primary Network - shared some of the exploration in blog yesterday but is full of potential!

6. Springhill Primary - collaborating with Thea Soltau to devise celebration of all things Brazil! - looks as though it will involve a samba/celebratory dance/festival 'type thing' which has stories inserted exploring rainforests/ the uncontacted tribes of Brazil/ traditional tales from the connecting cultures etc...

...just a taster - there's also ongoing Creative Agent work (am really enjoying challenging myself to find more creative ways of evaluating with people in response to pod conversations), Sing Up legacy and the minor matter of a wedding to prepare for - which has numerous exciting creative projects connected - mostly textile and sculpture inspired rather than music! What was that about time to create?!! - had better get on and make the most of it!

Stronger than the sum of our parts...

Had a fab day today - was working on behalf of Brighter Sound to facilitate the development of a practitioner network.

Began with mapping exercise -


- literally! (may have got a bit carried away with my flag making preparation!) We also mapped our current interests/experience mapping common ground and celebrating diversity with the obligatory post-its and flip chart categories!



Following that I dared to facilitate an open forum style session where people brought their ideas and interests forward to develop conversation and explore potential for using those within the network and primary school delivery. Have never tried this before and I'll be honest it's quite scary to trust the concept of people bringing things forward but since witnessing the amazing process and results which came out of the Vocal Force: Sangeet project which was facilitated in this way by Beccy Owen, I was convinced it was worth a try!


I remain convinced - really inspiring and a rich pool of ideas and skills to draw upon. Really looking forward to seeing how the network evolves from here. And we managed to fit some singing in too! - Songs from the Baka tribe and Gospel roots.