MDN for Gloucester

Quickly - making a note that I sent out more emails to the city’s secondary schools and the Head of Expressive Arts at Bishop’s College is interested in getting students involved.  I’m meeting him and another member of staff next Friday.

And the week after the Big Lottery Fund are doing a workshop at the Guildhall which I’ll be attending and I’ll get to meet the advisor for the HLF afterwards for a chat about this project.

I’m going to get the MDN team to work together on funding applications.  There are a number of streams that we can apply to and many hands will make light work hopefully!

Today I went to talk to Rob Champion at BBC Gloucestershire.  His job there is mostly voice over editing and production and as a bonus extra he gets to put together a 10 minute Gloucestershire Introducing…. piece as part of Claire Carter’s show every Saturday.

You can check out the shows online but you’ll have to scroll through the 2 & 1/2 hour Claire Carter show to find the Introducing 10 minute slot.

Rob’s slowly building up an audience for the 10 minute slot and he’d really like to create a strong argument for the station’s management to consider giving him a whole day to produce an hour long show every week.

He interviewed me about my work producing the nham compilation CD, the GMF, Wired and other music development projects and issues.

It was nice and comfortable - the studio’s got air conditioning!

More Importantly if local bands want to be featured on the show as well as keeping Radio 1 etc. up to date with new stuff from the regions then all they have to do is upload stuff using the BBC’s uploader

Rob was also able to name drop big time.  He was post-production assistant on 1 Giant Leap’s What About Me? project and spent 2 years in Mallorca helping them put stuff together.  I was mightily impressed and envious of his experience doing that as I think the 1 Giant Leap stuff is exceptionally innovative and brilliant.

I also agreed that I would supply Rob with the best live takes from the upcoming Wired shows starting in October which is really cool.

I, like Rob, think that the BBC Gloucestershire Introducing…. project could become a hub like media outlet for the county’s unsigned artists so I’m thinking about ways that the GMF can effectively and pro-actively signpost and contribute to it.

Today I also arranged to provide some computer music lessons to a chap named Elliot today.  That will start in September once he receives funding from the Barnwood Trust.  Should be interesting!

I will be starting an inclusive collaborative music recording project at the Guildhall on Tuesday nights from September 15th - looking for local singers, rappers, lyricists, musicians to get involved and see what can be produced with open minds, a bit of elbow grease, talent, inspiration and ambition.

I was getting a bit of a muddled mind looking at funding for the GMF and in a moment of clarity I figured that I could start something without funding so the above will be in the next Guildhall brochure.  I’ll be posting up a new blog for the project in the summer.

Managed to offload some postcards to Malcolm - the chair of the GMF board this morning whilst we were getting passports photocopied and signed as true at the bank for the additional signatories on the account (finally!).

I met with Martin Wallace from the Gloucester Heritage Urban Regeneration company.  His job is Programme Executive.  I’m not sure what that means but I knew that he has a serious interest in music and real practical community development in the city.  He’s a musician as well.  We talked about my ideas for projects - especially the Heritage Songs idea.  It’s difficult to know how he can help directly, but it’s important that the GMF has good relationships with people in these sorts of organisations.

Yesterday I seemed to suffer from a 24hr bug of some sort so spent the day in bed feeling lousy.

Today I met with Jo Beal who is the new Youth Music Executive Officer for the South West (North) region.  She’s been travelling around the region meeting people involved in music development and provision.  We talked about all sorts of things.  The discussion wasn’t particularly focused and was fairly informal (which I like) and half way through Pat Roberts wandered down and I was able to make introductions (we met at the Guildhall).  I’ve asked Jo to signpost any contacts she makes in Gloucestershire to the GMF and hopefully we may be able to identify an opportunity where we might benefit from Youth Music’s open programme (which launches on 1 July).

We’re definitely going ahead with the Teenage Rampage gig at the Guildhall on 25 July, but we’ve moved it to the cinema and it’s going to be an intimate 100 seated affair with an acoustic bent.  BBC blast are going to film it and hopefully we’ll have an act from Gloucestershire to represent at Colston Hall opening in September.

I spoke to the HLF earlier this week and got the low-down on what they advise I need to include in the application for funding the Heritage Songs project.  Youth Consultation is a big requirement.  So today I wrote a round robin email and sent it to several City secondary schools.  I’ll follow up next week with phone calls.

Gigging with Dan from Big Blue Sun tonight in Dursley at a poetry evening in a church - should be interesting.

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!