Quiet Voices recap

From my point of view, as a musician going in to a new project, I found the whole thing very exciting and challenging! At the very beginning I came in and did a short warm up/introduction in the hall of the building where we were working and this went down very well and served the purpose of allowing the participants, who were mostly refugees from all over the world, to meet me and to get a very basic idea of what we were hoping to do with the project. Although the regular group that we established was fairly small, we had new people coming in and out each week, one of the main things that I noticed right from the start was how receptive people were to engaging if and when they had the opportunity.

On the surface the task that had been set was quite daunting in that we were trying to work in one group with people from all over the world, many of whom spoke very little English and me and Kerry speaking even less of theirs :). Of course as the weeks went on and the group dynamics developed the composition came together naturally as if we'd all been working together for years. The many obstacles seemed to be overcome with ease by way of the group pulling together to find the solutions to problems such as language barriers and the occasional lack of performance skills, although there was never any lack of enthusiasm and willingness to have a go!

It would have been nice to delve deeper into the cultural music of some of our participants but with the time we had this wasn't really possible. What we did manage to do was tie the different cultures and histories together through language and once the common theme of 'Freedom' had been decided upon and the main body of the song composed we asked each member of our group to write a short piece about what mental health meant to them and we then crafted this into a spoken word section, over music, where each piece was read in its original language before then being translated into English. This in part for the audience but also to give our final composition some added depth and texture and it worked perfectly, as I’m sure the group would agree.

Overall I found it to be a fantastic experience, composing, recording and performing the piece with the group and from the feedback that we got it seemed that everyone in and around the group felt the same. The workers and volunteers at the centre where the project was based were fantastic in supporting us and helping us with anything and everything that we needed, including filling in at performances when regular group members couldn’t make it. This made my life very easy and I looked forward to the session every week! We pulled off two fantastic performances, with the group performing once after my involvement had ended and I’m extremely pleased with everyone’s input. I think that most of the group have had very positive experiences and learned and developed new, transferable skills that they can now carry with them into the rest of their journeys.

If I could have asked for anything more it would have been more time to musically develop some of the ideas that came up with regards to combining the music of the many different nationalities that we had involved. We did manage to do a basic recording of the song which will stand as a fantastic reminder of the power of collaboration in composition. I hope to revisit the group in the future and am very humbled and grateful to have been a part of such beautiful project!

 

Halima Cassell has just finished her 3rd session with a group of young people from a local school, producing ceramic panels this afternoon here at Action Factory.

Halima with the clay tiles created here in Action Factory today by a group of year 8 students

Twenty students came and spent time with the artist, learning techniques, styles and inspiration before trying out their new knowledge on the clay,  by carving intricate patterns into the rolled clay. Halima is working with different groups and will create a final piece bringing all the different groups panels together which will be shown in Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery in January 2013.

Here are some of the carved clay examples 
from the Islamiyah School in Blackburn

Woven Threads

The next part of Fabric has been the drama project with Avaes Mohammad, with movement work by Balbir Singh.

For eight days, eight local people shared their own personal stories and connections with Blackburn with Darwen.  On the final evening; Friday 23rd November; Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery became the venue for the performance of these stories.

The impact has been extremely positive, with comments from participants showing leaps in confidence and self belief beyond our expectations.  As part of an approach to evaluation, each participant kept a diary.  I have, with people's permission, taken some extracts from these diaries to show the process in their own words and the following posts will show these extracts.

Quiet Voices

The first project to come under the banner of 'Fabric' has been that of 'Quiet Voices.'  This has been a development from Action Factory's previous work in that the funding allowed for six weeks with a musician, Frenchie, to work with a group of adults from the refugee and asylum seeking community in Blackburn.  The intention was to pass on and develop skills to support participants in creating a song for World Mental Health Day - not only to increase their own self esteem, communication skills and wellbeing, but to create an original, artistic piece of work that communicated an important message.  Our previous work with this participant group has involved Drama, Writing and Spoken Word, as well as shorter projects involving Dance, Film and Music and Visual Art.  Music sessions have always been well-received, but as it is not a specialism within the core staff team at Action Factory, it has been difficult to sustain without additional funding.

To date, the resulting song, 'Freedom'  - written and performed by the group with verses in English and seven Spoken Word sections in different languages - has had an audience on three occasions in October 2012: a World Mental Health Day event at the Asylum and Refugee Community Drop in (Wesley Hall, Blackburn;) the Arts and Minds event organised by the Community Restart Team (Darwen Aldridge Community Academy) and the NHS sponsored Diversity Day (Soccer Dome, Blackburn.)  The event at Darwen Aldridge Community Academy gave us the opportunity to support two locally-based film makers to create short pieces for projection and to showcase writing from our recent Creative Writing pilot project in Darwen, as well as providing a workshop with Frenchie that allowed the Health professionals present to create and rehearse their own song.

FABRIC - our latest project

Fabric is a programme developing three strands of Action Factory’s existing work: 

• Arts in Health; 
• Work with new and established artists of South Asian heritage
• Arts with refugee / asylum / migrant communities. 

The work is funded by Arts Council England via their Grants for the Arts programme.

This blog will be a way of documenting the process and reflecting on the work.  Artists and participants will be invited to contribute, making it a useful tool in monitoring and evaluating artistic process and engagement.  The company aims to learn and develop throughout the project, making new networks, trying different ways of working, evaluating and sharing the results for the benefit of our own and others' development.