Interview with Matt from Rock Trust
Fantastic to hear from Matt about the Rock Trust workshops and the formation of the Rock Trust band leading to their first gig!
jedmilroy
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Posts by Jed Milroy:
Interview With Ryan from the IO
Here’s an interview with the fantastic Ryan from our Intermediate Orchestra course. What a star!
Interview With Bryden Stille
Good to hear from Bryden Stille about the partnership between Tinderbox and Edinburgh Napier University. We’re really looking forward to all the opportunities ahead of us in this partnership in 2018/19.
Multi-Cultural Family Base Songwriting
We’ve been having a lot of fun composing a song for performance at Leith Gala day with young people at the Multi-Cultural family base. Here’s a wee taster!
Tinderbox, S!nk and Fingal Youth Choir Improvisation Workshop
What a day we had working with S!nk and Fingal Youth Choir!
Tinderbox and S!nk Collaboration At Inverleith House Video
Liam Baker has made a fantastic video of our collaboration with S!nk at Inverleith House in April.
What a pleasure it was to work with such amazing musicians and videographers!
Tinderbox Collaborate with Sink at Pianodrome
‘The Pianodrome is a state of mind’ says Tim Vincent-Smith, one of the Directors of the project and Saturday the Tinderbox Orchestra entered that state of mind. We were safely guided on our journey by the custodians of the Pianodrome, the amazing and improvisational band ‘Sink’. We were joined by a large group of young singers fresh off the coach from Fingal for their first experience of Scottish Culture. Fingal Youth Choir may have received a slightly unusual view of how we do things in Scotland, but they certainly got stuck in with the music.
It was a day of improvisation and movement. Goosebumps and big ideas. Separate projects all joining together to feel, very naturally, like one big project. People simply getting to know each other by experimenting though music. All the more enjoyable in the beautiful setting of Inverleith House in Edinburgh’s Botanic Gardens.
Once again I find myself saying, ‘this is what it’s all about’.
Watch out for video footage of the event coming soon.
Pouring Emotions Onto The Page
It was a particularly emotional Youth & Community Hub last night and one that really highlights the power of creative expression.
One of our regular Tinderboxers arrived at the beginning of the Hub in a terrible state because of things that had happened earlier in the day. I could see that she was incredibly angry and struggling to keep it under control. We started having a chat and she was literally shaking with rage with tears rolling down her cheeks.
As the Hub started she asked for a pen and paper and started writing.
After 20mins or so she was visibly more calm and came to join the rap group. She built up the courage to share what she had written and everyone could see it was a great piece of writing about dealing with anger.
Despite not wanting to perform her work in person she agreed to let Tinderbox Tutor Elek Kish share her words at the open stage. It was a really powerful moment and you could see that she had turned something very negative into a massive positive in a short amount of time.
This is what it’s all about.
There was also a jam with bagpipes, hip hop loops and rappers complaining about the reduced sugar in Irn Bru.
This is also what it’s all about.
Synth-Maker Course Starts
Our 2018 Digital Arts programme kicked off on Sunday with the beginning of our four week Synth-Maker course led by Yann Seznec.
We’ve been tinkering with resistors, slopping solder around and emitting light from our diodes.
Who knows what will happen next week? Only Yann can guide the way.
Orchestra Trailer Goes Live
Our new Orchestra Trailer goes live today!
The footage was all taken as part of the rehearsals and performance at Hidden Door Festival 2017. What a gig it was!
Thanks again to everyone at Hidden Door for everything.
Rock Trust at Tuesday Hub
Gret to have our partners, Rock Trust, back at out Tuesday night Youth & Community Hub this term.
The Rock Trust works with young people between the age of 16 and 25 who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. This includes young people who are in transitions, leaving care or home and those involved in offending, alcohol or drug misuse.
The gang have been working on their own performances at the Hub and have formed a new band who are hoping to organise a performance outside of the Tuesday night Hub.
Vote for us on the ‘Epic Awards’ Shortlist
Started in 2010, the Epic Awards shine a light on the achievements of volunteer-led arts group across the UK and Ireland, aiming to inspire others to get involved and participate in creative activities.
The Epic Awards are run by Voluntary Arts, who promote active engagement in creative, cultural activities. In previous years, winning or being shortlisted for an Epic Award has been a real boost for groups, who found their profile raised locally and nationally and that it helped with future fundraising efforts.
The 2018 national winner and runner-up for Scotland will be selected by a panel of judges, while the ‘People’s Choice Award’ will be chosen by members of the public, who can vote online at www.epicawards.co.uk until voting closes on Wednesday 11 April.
The Scotland winners and runners-up will attend a special reception in Dublin on Thursday 3 May.
Kathryn Welch, Director of Voluntary Arts Scotland said: “We were delighted to receive a record number of entries to the Epic Awards in Scotland this year, and were blown away by the very high standard of the entries. It’s an absolute pleasure to be able to shine a light on our ten shortlisted groups, whose work – like so many volunteer-run activities across Scotland – brings joy and vibrancy to our communities. We were thrilled to be able to bring the shortlisted groups together in Edinburgh to celebrate their work, to provide a forum for sharing and learning, and to say ‘thank you’ for the unstinting volunteer energy that enables these groups to thrive.”
Multicultural Family Base Ceilidh Video
Thanks to Trina McKendrick for the great video of the Multicultural Family Base Ceilidh.
We’re looking forward to the next one on 21st May.
CAMHS Songwriting Session
Sometimes visiting Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services can be quite a quiet workshop. A lot depends on who is on the ward and how people are feeling. However last week was a pretty loud and creative songwriting session for a number of reasons.
As I arrived there was a guy playing guitar, someone else on the computer and someone writing at a desk. As I set up it turned out that the person playing guitar was up for doing some music with me. Also the person on the computer is really into computer based music and brought over some equipment he had been using. Once we had a bit of a jam going the guy who had been writing came over to join. It turns out that we was writing some poetry.
Quite quickly, with his blessing, we started working on putting his poetry to music. Everyone participated in their own way including another patient who was providing us with rhythm.
By the end of the session we were performing a brilliant song that had been written in collaboration with 4 patients in the unit who were all continuing to do what they had being doing separately, but joined together for the purpose of writing a song.
At the end of it there was much enthusiasm and the whole place felt quite vibrant.
Sometimes it all comes together!
Orchestra Outreach At Balerno and Craigroyston
We’ve had a lot of fun over the last few weeks visiting High Schools for our orchestra courses. The challenge in these workshops has been to collaboratively compose a piece of music for orchestra in 2 hours. The aim is that the piece will be interesting but also simple enough to be played by beginners. We started with improvising rhythms and used these to develop melodies and then bunged it all together to see what would happen. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and some great musical ideas came out of it.
Here’s Jed interviewing Tessa Martin of Craigroyston High and Maree Anderson at Balerno about the workshops.
Composition at Craigroyston
Students on our Digital Music course at Craigroyston Community High School continue to nail it this week. We’re now at the point where they are producing their own tracks. Check out this from DJ Brian:
And here’s Craigroyston High School music teacher Rachel Ponte talking about our projects so far:
Tuesday Hub
Another inspiring week at our Tuesday Y&C Hub at North Edinburgh Arts.
It was a surprise to have a very accomplished young piper joining us to jam with the drumming group.
I caught up with one of our regular Hub participants
And the night finished with a brilliant perfomance from our newest rapper – Wee Natural
Happy Chinese New Year!
We had a fantastic time brining in the Chinese New Year (a little early) at the Multicultural Family Base Ceilidh.
Jessica Hui, one of our Tuesday Hub team, shared a traditional Chinese tune that her mother had taught her when she was young. The rest of the band improvised along. Definitely something we’d like to develop further.
Also a fantastic collaboration with Wei Wang and her friend in singing the ‘Chinese New Year Song’. The melody seems familiar!
We have really enjoyed our partnership with the Multicultural Family Base so far. We’re aiming to organise events that help people share their different cultural backgrounds and develop a sense of community and support for those who get involved. We have a series of workshops and events planned for the rest of the year. Watch this space for more info.
Fast Forward Back In Time
Great for our Tuesday Hub to have a visit from Chris Read of ‘Fast Forward’. They have a really interesting project they were sharing with the Tinderboxers. Here’s what they are saying about it:
Young people have always been at the cutting edge. They’ve made their own scenes, their own fashions and their own music.
Now we’d like to take to take a look at this amazing history and get you involved.
Fast Forward is going to run an exciting new project that looks at young people’s fashions, music, styles and dancing since the 1960’s.
The project will give young people an opportunity to look at clothes, records, magazines and make-up, from hippies, punks and Rastafarians to skateboarders, emo’s and hip-hoppers.
to hear more, call Chris on 554 4300 or email chris@fastforward.org.uk
Craigroyston Digital Music Course
‘Is it Calvin Harris or is it Callum?’ said Callum as he listened back to his recording project on headphones. He didn’t realise that the rest of us in the classroom could hear him. Obviously we all laughed, but there was something really special that we all shared in his pride about what he has achieved.
In the middle of last term we were invited to build on our partnership with Craigroyston Community High School by delivering a Digital Music course to the S4s. The whole thing has been a reminder that even the most simple creative ideas can build into amazing things.
Working in partnership with Rachel Ponte, one of the music teachers at Craigroyston, we have developed a year long Digital Music course aimed at keeping disengaged students interested and creative in the classroom and it seems to be working!
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