Communities of Possibilities
A project presented by Borderlands, funded by Arts Council England
Overview
Our Communities of Possibilities Songwriting Project involves four groups of children and young people from Redcar and Cleveland. Each group has been matched with a musician who is guiding the young participants through an exploration of their community’s heritage, their current lives and their hopes for the future. Together, they are creating folk songs that are being shared first with older residents in care homes in the same communities, then
performed at Saltburn Folk Festival, Between the Tides Festival in Redcar, and finally at a “Weekend of Dreaming” to be organised by Borderlands.
What is the project about?
Folk music is an ideal medium for communities to explore their heritage, to process current lived experiences and to articulate their hopes and dreams. The expressive possibilitiesare limitless when combining words (inventing new ones if need be!) with melody,harmony, rhythm and structure, and instrumental accompaniment. This project brings songwriting folk musicians together with groups of children and young people from Redcar and Cleveland.
Examples of folk songs embodying radical re-imaginings have been shared by the musicians with each group, showing the range of issues and topics covered in the genre. This illustrates the way that history is celebrated or critiqued, daily life charted, and futures both likely and fantastical are described. The folk genre is equally at home with the mundane as with the exceptional, with reality as with the spiritual or supernatural. It can range from directly descriptive to allegorical or even abstract. A guided exploration of each community’s history, current lives and hopes for the future led into co-creation of new songs. These new songs have been performed to older persons’ groups in the same communities. On the basis of the older people’s responses, the new songs have been developed and the songs will be performed at Saltburn Folk Festival, Between the Tides in Redcar, and then the Communities of Possibilities closing event “Weekend of Dreaming”.
How have local communities been engaged?
The Events Team at Redcar and Cleveland Council have been fully behind this project from the start. They facilitated contact between the Project Leader (Nigel Carden,volunteer Director of the Folk Festival) and local community groups for children and young people and we put out open calls on social media too. We appointed a freelance Project Coordinator (Emma Dyson) to support engagement with organisations involving children and young people from communities where music and arts opportunities are relatively limited.
After discussion with a range of potential partner groups we have progressed the project with:
Brotton Brownies, Badger Hill Primary Academy, StrHive Saltburn, Grangetown Youth Centre Following an open call for songwriters to express interest in being commissioned to work on the project we matched four professional musicians to the groups listed above:
Anna Hughes
Katie Doherty
Maddie Morris
Bridie Jackson
As the musicians began to deliver workshops, the Project Coordinator reached out to care homes close to the bases of each of the groups. This was to bring and intergenerational dimension to the project, sharing the work of children and young people with the older generations in their communities. The homes we are already working with are:
Skelton Court
Hazel Grove
Sea View
Eston Lodge
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The songs will be showcased first at Saltburn Folk Festival, Saturday 9th August, 4-5pm at Emmanuel Church, Windsor Street, Saltburn and then at Between The Tides, Sunday 24th August 10.30-11.30am at Kirkleatham Museum and Grounds. These performances will ensure that the songs reach a wider audience including invited members of the communities where the songs were written. Invitations have been sent to families of participants, and one of the care homes involved has already arranged for some of their residents to come to the Saltburn performance. They asked if they could be included in this way after seeing the enthusiastic response when the songwriter visited to share a song written by children from their community. Stephen Weatherall, a local musician, will be providing additional support to groups at Between the Tides.
Finally, the songs will be shared at the Communities of Possibilities closing event. The activities and outputs will be publicised to bring positive attention to the communities involved.
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