Do you ever feel like your mind is in meltdown? Mine is today so I’m going to list matters of importance today - mainly as a record rather than making a lame attempt to be entertaining (I simply haven’t got the energy!)
1. Yesterday spoke to the HLF lady about my pre-application for the Heritage Songs project - two essential things to include in the application are a good young people consultation and partnership agreement. Also need to re-jig the plan as the core target age group for HLF Young Roots is 13-25 so primary schools element has to be lower profile if at all.
2. Met with Andrew L in Cheltenham this morning. He’s been recording Jim Lockey and the Solemn Sun at the Uni’s recording studio. Sounding pretty good. Dropped off the GMF marketing postcards to him and had a chat about his recent meeting with Paul McKee (all good) and a joined up GMF awards for all bid for capital items soon.
3. The MusicHut has closed temporarily due to some problems with volunteers. I’ve got a couple of recent graduates from the university of Gloucestershire interested in taking the hut on and I’ve prepared all the info they need to consider things including the offer for them to retain the service independently and help them negotiate with the landlord when the lease comes to an end in April 2010. For now I’m providing access to previous users until they agree and commit to taking it on. hopefully it’ll all be in place by July.
4. Phoned Zac to see how the website is progressing. His designer friend gets back from the Isle of Wight festival today so Zac’s been playing with graphics. Aiming to get it sorted by end of July.
5. 12 July - Cheltenham hub event that Andrew is running. He’ll post up details in due course.
6. Mark Bick in the forest is representing the GMF (we’re letting him use some of his networker time to do this) on a Building Schools For The Future working group taking place this year.
7. Met with Sarah Orton, education officer at the Folk and City Museums. Talked to her about the Heritage Songs project idea and gleaned info from her about accessing secondary schools for projects and consultation with young people.
8. Met with Becky Kent who as well as working at the Guildhall is the arts co-ordinator for Cleeve Sports Centre. She runs a programme of arts activities for the community in the evenings and weekends. I’m talking to her because she is one of a few people involved in arts provision in Tewkesbury Borough which in addition to Gloucester is my patch. She’s provided me with much to think about and act on.
I’m not doing much else this week on the GMF stuff. I’m coaching a student tomorrow at Churchdown School then in the afternoon I’m preparing for the Pupil Conference on Thursday that I’m doing with the Gloucester Schools Partnership. It’ll be my job to process the workshop results that the 150 to 200 children from 30 schools in the city create in the morning in order to write a childrens charter with a group of children that they can present to the QCA at the end of the conference. Then on Friday I’ll travel out to see Mark Bick again and drop off the postcards for the GMF and find out more about what’s going on in the forest. Then me and my mate Dan are playing a gig in Dursley in the evening. Then on Saturday I’ll go check out the Milestone Special School Sports Ability day. No rest for the wicked!