Musical Beacons: Creative Facilitation in Community Contexts

Throughout 2014, Soundcastle - the music social enterprise, invited families with children of all ages to come together for a very special free music project. Guided by the Soundcastle team (Hannah, Jenni, Gail and Rachael), parents and children had the chance to work together with other family groups to create their very own music and songs on a weekly basis.

Soundcastle is a music social enterprise with the mission of site-responsive music making as a social catalyst. The Musical Beacons project aimed  to ignite communal creativity to celebrate the individual voices of unique communities, and the diversity of our London boroughs and residents.

Throughout 2014, families came together in Bow and Charlton with the aim of making friends, having fun and creating new music together. Their connection was the community they live in and the challenge of making music they wanted to share with others. Participants spanned all ages, and included professional musicians, keen amateurs and musical novices, all connected by a sense of place. Every week we met to create and devise new music, using our voices and a range of instruments. The groups played an array of drums, ukuleles, balafons and percussion instruments provided by Soundcastle as well as bringing in their own. Our inspiration was taken from local history, stories, memories, personal experience and the thoughts and ideas of our participants.

The age range spanned from new born babies to people in their 80s and everybody collaborated creatively on an equal level. At Soundcastle, we believe that any mix of people can create exciting and meaningful music together and the communities in Bow and Charlton certainly proved this in 2015!

We will be delivering a CPD on creative facilitation using practical activities from the Youth Music funded Musical Beacons toolkit on February 7th 2015 and we would love to welcome as many people as possible. For more information and to book your place at this event, please click on this link: http://soundcastle.co.uk/february-cpd/

Here's what some of our participants say:

‘Beacons has been an amazing experience for my two children. They have grown in confidence in talking about and sharing ideas in a group and made some lovely music.’  

‘Thank you for all the fantastic music making with all our family and friends.’

‘a useful community group that helps families express themselves with their children; useful for listening and creating, interacting in a group. A positive local contribution.’