Save the Rainbow Pub in Birmingham

Just a very quick post to encourage you to join the Facebook group to support the Rainbow Pub in Digbeth Birmingham. If you know it – you will know that they have developed an excellent music programme and really added to the Digbeth and Birmingham music scene in recent years. The Facebook group puts their case well – so you read that and join the group… please?

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=215693995444#/group.php?gid=215693995444

Doha – first impressions

Well I’ve only been here a few hours. But in that time, I’ve meet people from Qatar, Palestine, Yemen and Greece and started already to have conversations that will change the way I see the world forever. I have a few photos and videos – but they will have to wait until tomorrow. But I have had some very interesting chats with people involved in the Athens Olympics – and it is fair to say that the issues we face in the UK in the lead up to 2012 are similar to those felt all over the world – wherever the Olympics are held. It was encouraging and in some ways heartening to hear about how other countries cope in the lead up, during and after holding an Olympic Games.

Doha is a very beautiful city with lots of obvious promise and building works going on across the city that I imagine will make it a place to visit again and again.

Musituality

Last night I was lucky enough to be invited by Rich Batsford to a gig he was involved in called Musituality. It was a multi artist, multi faith concert involving the medatitive piano compositions of Rich Batsford and performances by St Mary’s Schola, St Mary’s Church in Moseley and Islamic ensemble Aa’shiq al-Rasul. There was also VJing from Chromatouch or Leon Trimble (an old school mate of mine who I hadn’t seen for years until about 18 months ago!).

The setting of the show was St Philips Cathedral in Birmingham which was in itself a very powerful venue in which to place this programme. The atmosphere as you walked into the Cathedral was fantastic – it was full of people of all ages, families, couples and literally every age group. I was wondering just how many of these people had been to Birmingham Cathedral before, I suspect not many.

It was great to hear Rich playing his piano pieces and with a bit of explanation too. St Mary’s Schola did a wide ranging set but I think they were let down by the sound system and balance and dynamic contrast was problematic – but I run a choir I guess I’m being critical. It thought they were great in their final piece when the textures and dynamics shone out.

The second half featured Aa’shiq al-Rasul who I’ve never heard before but I’m sure I’ll hear again because I thought they were great. They are a nasheed group that perform traditional and contemporary nasheeds in a range of languages ranging form  English, Arabic, Urdu and Punjabi. They also play percussion and on this occasion they had the audience singing along too. They certainly whipped the full Cathedral audience into a frenzy at times with a combination of great singing and charisma.

Well done to all involved – I thought it was a great achievement – and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

I’m off to Doha – any thoughts!

I’m going to Doha in Qatar next week for the Silatech Conference:

“British Council in collaboration with the Qatari Students Network & Silatech is pleased to announce the exciting opportunity for youth to participate in the Silatech Workshop Summit in collaboration with British Council and Qatari Student Network on 6, 7 & 8 June 2009 in Doha, Qatar. This distinctive, high profile and progressive event will undoubtedly trigger a significant step to enhance the role of youth in the Middle East and North Africa as well as to increase the involvement of young Arab entrepreneurs in tackling the issues of employment and under employment that plague the Arab World.”

As you can see – a pretty big topic but the idea is that young entrepreneurs from the Middle East and North Africa will look at how they can actively tackle youth unemployment in their countries and there is a scattering of people from the UK (myself included) to bring our own experiences into the mix.

I will be taking in my extensive experience of the community arts sector and how arts activities can inspire and transform young people and I have more examples than I can remember (I’m hoping that they will be useful – I’m guessing I wouldn’t have been invited otherwise).

But I’m keen to get other people’s views on this, namely:

- what practical impact/influence can young entrepreneurs have on unemployment in their countries?

- how can it go beyond being role models and offering placements?

- does it always need money – or are there more creative ways to bring young people out of unemployment?

OK – I know a big topic – I’m not expecting essays (but do point me to them if you like) and I don’t expect our experiences here in the UK can always be transferable. Thoughts and/or anecdotes on the back of a postcard or on a comment gratefully received!

Sharpening My Edge

I’m on a course at the moment that I am finding inspirational and so I thought I’d share my experiences with you. Sharpening Your Edge is a strengths based leadership course for women who are at senior positions in their career. Each cohort is a small one with one half a a dozen women on it – so the approach is very personal and therefore really useful.

The course is run by the inspirational coach and trainer Carol Coombes who used to work for Caret but now runs courses and projects on a freelance basis. The course starts with the Strength Finder which is a psychometric test that gives you your top 7 strengths and the whole course looks at how you can use your strengths to get even better at what you do rather than focussing the whole time on your weaknesses.

You do 1 day per month for 6 months. I’ve done 2 months so far and I’m already benefitting (I can’t wait to see how I feel at the end!). We have been looking at how your energy works throughout the day and what things feed your positive energy and what things zap your energy. I’ve already used this to help me with those days when you look at your to do list and just can’t get started! I’ve also used what I’ve learned as I’ve passed some of it on to people who I have some responsibility for managing and/or motivating. And it seems to work!

I’ve already realised why I hate small talk, why I love problem solving and why I spend all my time being conscious of what I don’t know. I guess the thing is now to use what I’ve learned to to work smarter not harder.

I know that it can all sound a bit like hocus pocus – but actually I was quite cynical about psychometric tests – and now I’m rethinking my position.

I thought that I would keep you posted about how the day’s affect my working days as the rest of the days unfold. Apparently I’ll have a personal 5 year plan by the end of it and as that will take me up to 40 – I’m quite keen to see what I write!!

Seven things you’d never need to know about me

It seems that I overlooked a challenge set by Jaki Booth in February to write ‘Seven things you’d never need to know about me’. But now I’ve seen it I feel the need to rise to the challenge – and it is quite hard  - not sure how much of this will be news to you but:

1) I love cooking and entertaining – in fact last year I won our choir’s in house version of ‘Come Dine with Notorious’.

2) I married my childhood sweetheart – meeting Richard when I was 17 on the Birmingham School’s Symphony Orchestra trip to Paris in 1991.

3) I am scared of spiders and most creepy crawlies – in fact it’s not a joke I have nightmares and everything!

4) I love gardening – but I don’t really research it – it is more of a hit and miss approach of planting things and see what happens. We also have Koi pond and I get over excited by the frog spawn every year.

5) I can’t do small talk – nothing strikes fear into my heart like being put on a table of people I don’t know at a wedding!

6) I have my grade 8 clarinet and bassoon – but they are both dusty and in a cupboard at present (maybe when I retire eh?)

7) I have moved back to the part of Birmingham where I grew up and my daughters both attend my old Primary School

 

I need to pass on the 7 things to 7 people! So:

- John Mostyn

- Claire Burgess

- Adrian Burrows

- Bobbie Gardner

- Frankie Ward

- Rich Batsford

- Gurdan Thomas

MELTing music

A few months ago I was asked to get involved in a European project called MELT. It is quite an experimental project bringing together musicians from Birmingham, Genoa, Istanbul, Vienna and Sighişoara.

The project has been going for a while now and involves musicians working together to ‘melt’ their cultures and make new music.

For this final leg of the project there was an ambition to bring choirs from different communities of Birmingham together as part of the ‘melting’. Ian Chapman – crazy composer aka Gurdan Thomas is the overall music director from Birmingham and was commissioned to write a MELT choral symphony for our performance on March 18th.

I was then dispatched to teach parts of the symphony to Muslim women’s choir – the Ulfah Collective, the Catholic School choir at English Martyrs in Sparkhill and to my choir Notorious. We also worked with singers from the Zawiya in Birmingham.

We weren’t quite sure how it would all come together – but it did in the end was possibly one of the most moving performances I’ve been involved with for a long time. I need to get some piccies – and I’ll add them to the blog when they arrive!

The project is a credit to Claire Marshall – someone who I’ve worked with for years who is the Birmingham/UK Co-ordinator of MELT.

Sing Up in (da) House!

I’ve been working on one of those jobs that makes my work such a pleasure recently. I was asked by Sing Up – the National Singing Campaign led by Howard Goodall to run their celebration event on 14th March 09. This was exciting enough – but then it transpired that the venue was the Royal Opera House in London.

I don’t just blog work stuff – but this event was one of those special memories worth recording. Yes, it was a logistical challenge (polite term for it!) – 600 performers made up of primary aged children and their teachers and a 2000 strong capacity audience!

But more importantly the spirit of the day was really amazing and the quality of the singing of the young people was stunning. Amazing moments included Howard Goodall turning up and the choir from Lichfield stopping their performance to sing ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ which is Howard’s theme tune from the Vicar of Dibley! He was mighty chuffed!

The group coming from Sing Up Burton were so impressed that they were singing at the ROH that they had asked their teachers if the red carpet would be out for them! As it happens one of the entrances to the ROH has a red carpet and so they were very impressed with that and they fact that when they went on the backstage tour we’d organised – they got to the see the Royal Box and the Royal Loo (yes there is one!).

Anyway – here are some pics:

 

and on the way home the wonderful Brummie event team that came with me sat in First Class eating takeaway Pizza – classy!

The Youtube Symphony Orchestra – Audition now!

I’m trying to get my husband to audition for this (my bassoon skills need more than a week to be up to scratch!) but in the meantime have gander at this: The Youtube Symphony Orchestra. You can download the sheet music for your instrument – have a bit of practice and then send in your audition tape for a chance to play at Carnegie Hall. Sounds like fun to me. I’m even tempted to get my bassoon out!

They describe it as: 

Interested in joining the first-ever collaborative online orchestra? Professionals and amateur musicians of all ages, locations and instruments are welcome to audition for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra by submitting a video performance of a new piece written for the occasion by the renowned Chinese composer Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). We have tools to help you learn the music, rehearse with the conductor, and upload your part for the collaborative video.

And how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice and upload. Send us your talent video performance from a list of recommended pieces. Finalists will be chosen by a judging panel and YouTube users to travel to New York in April 2009, to participate in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra summit, and play at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas.

The deadline for all video submissions is January 28, 2009.

Go people of the West Midlands!

Blogging solidarity

I’ve watched with interest how the blogging community in Birmingham and beyond have got behind Created in Birmingham’s nomination as the Best UK Blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards.

The last few days all the key blogs in the area have got behind it and it is a great example of how the good work of Created in Birmingham has gained them respect from all sorts of quarters.

Vote today – as it is your last chance! 

http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-uk-blog/