by Author BPS

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Hope Creative Project - Southmead, Bristol. Session 8 - May 2017

Session 8 - May 2017

After a brief break from blogging, I am returning with a reflection on Session 8 in Southmead!

This week I was very lucky to be given the opportunity to take part in the session at Southmead. This provided a great opportunity to experience a new setting with a new group of young people which I was very excited about.

I hadn't met any of the young people before so I was slightly nervous about how the group dynamic would unfold, especially with a much larger group than the Filwood sessions, and also how they would react to a new person being involved in the session. Thankfully, the nerves were dispelled right from the start as we were all thrown in to a game of 'Musical Statues'! This was a great way to get all the young people involved and remove any anxieties they may have had. I looked around the room and saw every young person getting involved in one way or another, from being the best statue in the room to taking control of the music, and this enthusiasm was very infectious. After this warm up, the young people naturally got drawn towards the instruments that were scattered around the room. Even though it was great to see such excitement and enthusiasm for the instruments, another practitioner instantly realised that we might be heading towards a slightly unstructured session, and for the young people to get the opportunity to showcase their projects at the end, the decision was made to have a quick discussion about timings and who would practice and perform what. We all sat in a circle which made the discussion very inclusive and they were all great and putting ideas forward for time keeping. After agreeing the line-up and performance times, we all disbanded and began practicing.

I had noticed that one young person had gone off and sat on his own whilst playing with a video app on the iPad, so I asked if he could show me what he had been working on. He showed me in a lot of detail and I was amazed at how quickly he had picked up the fine editing features of the app. After a while, he turned his attention to the GarageBand app and we both sat down and experimented with the live production feature, which enables the user to trigger different clips form a range of instrumentation including drums, bass, keyboards and vocals. As I have a lot of experience in this area of digital music, I was really excited to help him practice his live performance. We found a quiet place for him to practice and I fetched the active speaker system so we could get a better audio representation. This instantly put a smile on his face and he described it as like being in a big nightclub where he was the headline act! After some practice sessions in a variety of genres, he settled on his favourite which had a deep Dubstep feel to it and included warm strings and big drums. As he was essentially performing live, I decided to add in the drumbox for another live element, and he accepted me playing along with him. Another practitioner joined us with a guitar, and although I was unsure of how well this would be received, Child A seemed to grow in confidence with his two new band-mates next to him.

After some more practice, it came to the time to perform in front of a now much larger crowd as all the parents and carers had arrived. This however did not affect his confidence and we began our performance. On the spur of the moment, another fellow practitioner joined in with some delicate piano chords and the whole performance grew like the closing song at a festival! The performance came to a close in a beautiful way, with elements of the song being filtered out to leave just the warm strings. To see this detail in his performance was an incredible moment to experience.

After all the young people had performed their pieces, we reflected on a great session and all wished that the performances could have continued all day, which is a great testament to the talents of the young people we work with.