Jubacana Online Summer School 2020
In August 2020 we decided to do an online summer school as we couldn't get together in real life. Our summer school is one of the key dates in the year and we wanted to figure out a way of delivering a week’s worth of content online before the school year started again. It's been a very difficult period for mass music making groups like ours, as well as having extra restrictions in place. Oldham at one point being the highest level of infection rate in the UK and part of the first wave of tougher local lockdowns. We are still learning and adapting and we are still in the middle of stricter measures and an ever evolving situation.
For our online summer school, we delivered a series of workshops via Zoom over the week including working with guest artists (Katumba), writing for percussion & melody, song writing, Portuguese language, dance, choreography, African dance, guitar & piano workshops, and more!
The guest artist element is a fundamental part of our previous summer schools (we usually play particular focus of working with people internationally in recent years). This year we worked with artists Ritchie Tunstall and Juliana Landim who run an organisation called Katumba based in Liverpool. They received emergency Arts Council funding and really developed the tech side of delivery and created an online programme called 'Life After Lockdown'. They were keen to roll out their learning working with young people and it was the perfect opportunity to have an interactive drumming workshop for us. Ritchie also recorded our debut EP: Floating Dragons.
It was also a great opportunity to develop our young leaders programme with older Jubacana members delivering music workshops online, and developing their teaching practice. We work with our older youth team in developing workshop and teaching skills and provide real life work opportunities in music.
These videos show a little taster of our week. One is a summary of the entire week's activity and the other one is the composition we came up with (which was produced by Shariq, one of our older youth team), which we'll hopefully adapt when we can meet in real life. If you'd like to have a chat about any of the things we've been offering our young folks during these strange times, please get in touch, we are more than happy to share our experiences: dan@jubacana.com
Credits:
"Life After Lockdown" by Katumba [ http://www.katumba.co.uk ]
"Jubassic Park" by Jubacana Percussion & Melody: Jubacana Audio edit & production: Shariq Ali Ashraf Video edit: Dan Jones
Thanks to our supporters: Youth Music & Oldham Arts Development.