Rocks ‘n’ Stroll along the Elwood Singing Walking Trail

Along a well-known part of Melbourne’s Bayside, a new Singing Walking Trail is fine tuning walkers into their environment through a series of songs telling stories that incite fresh knowledge and new perspectives of its familiar landscape.

Back during the murky depths of the 2020  lockdown, plans for the Elwood Singing Walking Trail were conceived and hatched by local choir leader and project facilitator, Jeannie Marsh. Originally intended to lift the spirits of Jeannie’s Elwood Community Choir at a time when singers were isolated from each other, a key focus of the project is connection, a cornerstone of all Jeanie’s work, and this spirit has flowed outwards from the choir, to the broader community of Elwood. 

“It was planned to be something that was accessible to anyone, irrespective of their situation whether they were living alone, home-schooling or whatever, to help combat feelings of loneliness and isolation, an activity to connect people more closely to their environment by sharing knowledge and stories of the local area using music and songs to keep everyone together and healthy in all ways.” 

With an initial grant from the City of Port Phillip, Jeannie and the choir embarked on a research and development plan in late 2020/early 2021. “We came up with these 12 songs and a little route with 12 stops around Elwood starting at the Neighbourhood Learning Centre where we rehearse, then going along the canal to the beach and ending back at the King of Tonga Bar which is across the road from where we rehearse, for a drink.” The resulting ‘self-guided musical stroll’ was officially launched and gifted to the fortunate community of Elwood through the hard work and dedication of the choir and Jeannie, in October 2022.

The stroll takes in 12 sites along a 6.8km stretch around Elwood, telling an oral history through songs celebrating a wonderfully broad range of local topics from weavers to water rats; music halls to middens; sourdough to ‘spotties’; migration and many more to delight and enlighten listeners of all ages. 

The trail also shines a light on the historical relevance of the place now called Elwood, back when it was an area of plentiful sustenance for First Nations people, long, long before it became the Bay as we know it today.  Before the waters came pounding through the Heads to transform the woodlands and wetland swamp into Port Phillip Bay, or ‘Nerm’ – the name given to the bay by First Nations people, as told to European settlers – Elwood was a site where kangaroos played, and eels and shellfish could be plentifully sourced. Jeannie has woven this history into a song called Nerm which can be listened to at song site 8 to encourage us to think beyond the immediacy of what we see when we look out towards the bay, and to reflect upon its legacy and the need to treat it with respect and care.

A soft launch for the ESWT was held in May 2021 and a second grant, combined with $6k raised by the choir at an auction, was then used for phase two of the project: compiling sing-along resources, marketing and promotional material to spread the word and promote the route. Jeannie recalls being struck by such a clear demonstration of passion and support for the project: “We have a number of visual artists within the group as well as a sculptor who all donated work; Rebecca Barnard came and sang for us; Tracy Harvey was the auctioneer and the choir members and their families were all very generous, it was really lovely.” 

Audio engineer James Hodson who had worked with Jeannie on a number of other projects came on board as the choir’s ‘fantastic’ audio guy, “you couldn’t do a project like this without somebody like James.” James is a multi-instrumentalist and when it came to songs such as Carry On, the 1931 song by Jack O’Hagan located at song site 3, James got in there and did an arrangement like a 1930s dance band playing all of the instruments himself. Carry On was written to raise people’s spirits during the Depression and, 90 years later, it has come back into its own to tell the story of Elwood’s music hall history.

Each of the 12 song sites is marked out by an illustration by local illustrator Consuelo Fernandez-Ortiz, and is accompanied by a QR code for access to information on the area, as well as links to a YouTube clip of the song and resources for singers such as sheet music and words to each song. “People can do the trail at any time because it’s self-guided. You can do the whole thing in one day and stop off somewhere for lunch, or find a site that you like, sit there as often as you like and listen to it seventeen times!” 

In reflecting on the journey of the Elwood Singing Walking Trail to date, Jeannie has clearly enjoyed its collaborative nature and bringing it into being. “It’s been a really enjoyable project and while it’s been multi-layered, it has been so harmonious and that’s just a joy to have a team of people who’ve shared artistic vision, community goals and everyone has given 110%.” 

To continue building momentum and awareness of the existence of the fabulous Elwood Singing Walking Trail, Jeannie is currently running Sunday Strolls around a part of it, once a month. “We do four song sites at a time and it runs for an hour and a half from 10:30 am until 12 noon on a Sunday morning. Elwood has some great shops and local businesses, we have loads of indigenous history and art deco history all along the beach, there are a lot of layers which will become clear or you can just ignore all that, have some fun listening to some songs, singing some songs and doing some dancing! ” 

The next Sunday Stroll will be held on Sunday 16th April, leaving from the Elwood Pier. The Sunday Stroll is free, just turn up with your mobile phone to access the music, all set to sing and wearing comfortable shoes; dancing optional!

For a sneak preview of songs and Song sites: https://www.esnlc.com.au/elwood-singing-walking-trail-song-sites-map-and-songs

Written by Deb Carveth, Community Music Victoria Copy Editor, with Jeannie Marsh; thanks Jeannie!
Main photo: ESWT Sunday Stroll 150123 singing at sign. Credit JEANNIE MARSH

Sharing Food & Music Makes Sunraysia Shine

Music and food make great mates, their charismatic combination creates the perfect context for friendships to flourish and where there’s one you will invariably find the other. From Vocal Noshes to music camps and choirs, there is nothing like a spot of music-making to work up an appetite and a gathering of like minded people chatting over a plateful of food after a session of singing or playing is a beautiful thing.

As Community Music Victoria is all about using music to facilitate connections and develop community networks we were very excited to learn from our Growing Community Music Murray Mallee team about what the good folks from Food Next Door Coop and Out of the Box Sunraysia are doing. Work that feels aligned with the values of our own organisation, and to hear about how everybody’s paths came to cross at the end of November.

Food Next Door Coop is a social enterprise scheme connecting newly arrived migrants with existing land owners who have soil space to share, and with vacant or under-utilised farmland in regional and rural areas of Victoria’s North West. It is a model that fosters inclusivity and generates the sharing of ideas in a literal cross-pollination of knowledge and culture, uniting people from diverse backgrounds with members of their new communities and providing them access to land and a way for them to support themselves on arrival in their new country, using farming practices from back home. Creating an avenue to a sustainable source of income and independence helps people to settle  and strengthens community cohesion, while working the land in this way increases the number of small scale farms using sustainable practices beneficial to soil regeneration. The outcome is high quality, organic produce and a healthier landscape, both literally and figuratively, from the grass roots up.

Beats and birthday cake at Out of the Box’s fifth birthday.
Photo credits: Out of the Box Sunraysia

Out of the Box offers local delivery of produce grown in the Sunraysia area using regenerative, organic farming practices and works closely with the Food Next Door Coop as a distribution outlet for their land sharing scheme. Bringing together customers, farmers, volunteers, and landholders, the onus is on keeping food miles down – everything is grown within a 150 kilometre radius of the city – and the boxes are sold on a subscription basis with a lucky dip of produce each week using prices set by the growers. It’s a beautiful way to develop and sustain the community, feeding the people of the township and enriching local community connections by bringing people together and strengthening the network, much in the same way as the community music groups listed on the CMVic database.

And, like music, food grown and shared within the community is not only nurturing, bringing people together at the source, it has a flow on effect. Events like farmers markets create avenues for the sharing and development of ideas and values and offer a springboard for friendships and tighter, healthier, more connected communities. They also provide wonderful performance spaces and opportunities for community choirs and music groups to share their work and spread the joy.

Drumming with Catherine Threlfall. Photo credit: Out of the Box Sunraysia

On November 26th 2022, Out of the Box Sunraysia celebrated its fifth birthday with an extravaganza of music, food and wine that was provided, made and shared by members of the community, including the CMVic Growing Community Music family. Catherine Threlfall led a drumming circle with people of all ages joining in and playing an assortment of percussion including djembes, triangles, and tambourines; there was a band with ukulele and fiddle players and dancing from the Barkindji Dancers, all accompanied by a sumptuous community feast made, of course, from locally sourced foods: Merbein Mushrooms and lentils, beetroot sourdough and even an orange almond birthday cake made with beautiful fresh navel oranges from the region. 

Click here to watch a beautiful clip of the afternoons activities and listen to a moving speech made by Grant Hyam who runs Out of the Box in which he explains what being a part of it has brought to his life.

So if you are beginning the new year full of intentions to live well, joining a community music group or choir is a wonderful way to tick this box straight off the bat. A list of singing and music making opportunities can be accessed for free on the CMVic website. And if you are fortunate enough to live within coo-ee of Sunraysia and the Mallee, exploring the delicious work of the Out of the Box and Food Next Door Coop communities may support the turning over of any new leaves and lead to fresh growth and exciting opportunities as we take on 2023, together. 

‘Off the Chai’ Photo credit: Out of the Box Sunraysia

‘A Shared Affair’ Photo credit: Out of the Box Sunraysia

Written by Deb Carveth, CMVic Copy Editor, in collaboration with Kylie Livingstone, CMVic Growing Community Music Local Catalyst for Mildura, Sunraysia, Mallee

Video Credit: Luke Gange, Gange Productions. Photo Credits: Out of the Box Sunraysia.

Euroa’s Voracious Appetite for the Return of Vocal Nosh

It’s never been hard to get excited about a Vocal Nosh, what’s not to love about informal harmony singing, hearty soup and crusty bread? For the folks of Euroa, the agonising wait for the return of this well-loved event is about to end this weekend, after more than two years in hiatus.

“We had our last Nosh in March 2020 and then it all came tumbling down” laughs Di Mackrell, who shares the facilitation of Euroa Vocal Nosh with Margie Chowanetz and Chris Day.

“The people of Euroa have been asking for it to return so we picked a date in November thinking that by then we’d be heading into the warmer weather and the number of bugs going around would be less.”

“It’s such a good thing to do and the joy that you can see on people’s faces that says ‘okay we’re doing this again’ is wonderful to see.”

-Di Mackrell

When we speak it is already November and Di is reporting sightings of snow on the mountains and is considering lighting the fire. There also appears to be a generous amount of germs going around and Di continues to feel highly responsible for the health and wellbeing of her singers.

“If you organise something and people become ill through attending, you will definitely feel a sense of responsibility, even though it is up to the individuals whether or not they wish to come along, and I do not wish to risk anyone’s health even though people are really wanting this singing as a group experience.”

In addition to her involvement with Euroa Vocal Nosh, Di runs the Strathbogie Singers and is very aware how much getting back to singing this year has meant to people, some of whom travel over an hour each way for the experience. “It’s such a good thing to do and the joy that you can see on people’s faces that says ‘okay we’re doing this again’ is wonderful to see.”

Interestingly, Di has observed that while some of her Strathbogie Singers enjoy Vocal Nosh, for others the inclusive style for which Noshes are so loved can feel intimidating. “Some feel wary of the openness of it and of learning songs aurally. At Nosh we mostly don’t hand out the words or music and I personally think that is really good for our brains, but some of my singers like to have that piece of paper in front of them with the words and the dots, whereas for other folks the dots are scary!” 

When Di experienced her first Vocal Nosh, the love and connection she felt for this informal way of singing together with others was instantaneous “I just loved it.” 

“Fay White, who pioneered the concept of the Vocal Nosh, taught Chris Day at Euroa High School back in the 70’s. By 2001, Chris was working as a music teacher in Euroa together with Linda Browne. Fay invited both Chris and Linda along to a singing leadership training session which was how Euroa Vocal Nosh started off. I just went along to see what it was all about and never had any intention or idea that I was going to lead music because I really wasn’t confident, it’s CMVic that has given me the confidence to do it.” Di laughs as she reflects back on this for a moment. 

Later again, when Linda left town, Chris felt that leading Vocal Nosh was too much to do on her own and by then, Di was not prepared to let it all go and decided that if it was a case of use it or lose it, she should invest in some leadership training and get stuck in, herself. Di hasn’t looked back and neither has the singing community of Euroa.

The celebrated return of Euroa Vocal Nosh also marks the approach of its 21st birthday. As the group moves towards this milestone, Di, Chris and Margie have been putting out feelers to see if anyone can be encouraged to be taken under their wings and trained to lead the Nosh. As Di says, “I know it’s a big thing cos I wasn’t confident to start with either.” 

Something Di particularly loves about Euroa Vocal Nosh is the uniqueness of each session. “You get this group of people who have never sung together before. Thinking back across the past 21 years, I think there has only been once or twice where we’ve not had somebody come along who has never been before, and you wouldn’t think it could keep happening but it does and the beauty of this is it doesn’t matter. Within a few minutes you’ve still got all these amazing harmonies, which is what makes a Nosh so exciting.”

Returning for the first Nosh in over two years has allowed for some changes to be made. Di, Chris and Margie have decided to move the session from its original Sunday evening time slot and turn it into an afternoon activity instead. The email has gone out to everyone with any prior involvement with Euroa Vocal Nosh and the fliers are up: On Sunday November 27th, the Nosh will be back, baby!

For many people, it can’t come back quickly enough. “The Nosh aspect gives people time to socialise and connect. When I think of my Strathbogie Singers, my ukulele group or our Nosh singers, we are an eclectic bunch, but for some people coming together to sing and make music is the bright spot in their week. It’s powerful, it is more than the music,” says Di, “it is just so important.”

Euroa Vocal Nosh returns this Sunday, November 27, 2022, from 2:30-4:30pm. One-to-One Wellness Centre, 121 Binney Street, Euroa. Expect  2 hours of harmony singing and socialising! The cost is  $15 which will include Viv’s sumptuous afternoon tea (children free). Covid safe guidelines and rules apply.

Written by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for Community Music Victoria, with Di Mackrell; thank you Di!

Sweet new series of Celtic Jam sessions for Young Adults with diverse learning needs & disabilities

Every Thursday evening in Box Hill, Judy Oleinikov and Katy Addis host an open jam Celtic music session for young adults aged between 15 and 25. Offered by Quasitrad Music Melbourne, the sessions are open to players of all abilities and to anyone with and without lived experience of diverse learning needs, and or disabilities. The sessions are free, funded by the Keys of Life Foundation, a charity that supports students with disabilities and or diverse learning needs to flourish through music making. The sessions offer opportunities for the development of techniques and life skills intended to enable young people to develop their aural music-making practice, while connecting up with each other socially.

“If you know the basic repertoire, the patterns and chord sequences, you can actually join in a jam session pretty much anywhere in the world where Celtic music is played.” 

The idea for the sessions was conceived by Katy Addis, a member of the Melbourne Scottish Fiddle Club. Both Katy and her husband are musicians and Katy was fully appreciative of the inclusive and particularly welcoming characteristics of Celtic music making; the way you can walk into a session in Melbourne, Ireland or New York and be likely to hear the same tunes. Katy reflected that if you know the basic repertoire, the patterns and chord sequences, you can actually join in a jam session pretty much anywhere in the world where Celtic music is played. 

As Judy says, “there’s a skill in learning by ear so that you can pick up tunes that other people are playing.  Katy has a son who is autistic who is now in his 20s who plays in a regular Celtic Jam session which I run in Box Hill on Wednesdays. He’s a key player, he’s the one who keeps us together and he is superb. The Celtic Jam sessions are a really good social outlet for him too and provide an opportunity to enjoy the social aspect of participatory music making.”

Again, it was Katy who having seen the positive effects of this music making experience on her son, realised it had huge potential for other autistic young adults who may be experiencing learning difficulties and who may not have finished school, making them at greater risk of social isolation. After successfully applying for funding to help turn her vision into a reality, Katy approached Judy. The pilot phase of the Welcome Sessions began at the end of May and while the sessions are open to players of pretty much any instrument, as it happens everyone so far plays keys.

“This has been really good for starting up. We have a group of keyboards in a circle and have been trying waltzes, ¾ timing is something they have not all tried before but it’s a lot of fun and it isn’t uncommon for autistic kids to have perfect pitch. Keyboards are also great for working separately if we choose to take this approach, or we can all play chords or melody. One thing that has been a challenge has been all starting at the same point and playing in time together as they’re used to doing their own thing and also accepting that if you make a mistake you have to keep going!”  There’s a life lesson to be learned there somewhere too.

“A couple of the kids have made recordings of the tunes which has been great and allowed everyone to familiarise themselves with the tunes that we’ll be learning in our Welcome Sessions. This means everyone actually has the chance to listen to the tunes before they then go and learn them. In that way, the tunes are in their heads which is the key to helping them learn.”   

The sessions are open to a broad age range and while the blurb says 15-25, Judy points out that actually they’re open to anyone from high school age upwards; she also has plans to get a bit of a band together and find public playing opportunities at events such as farmers markets. 

“It really is just a chance to use music as a tool for a social outlet, coming together and having a  group to meet with once a week, especially for young people who, once they’ve finished school, might not feel there is much happening around them, hence the name, ‘Welcome Sessions’. ”

Welcome Sessions are open to players of all abilities, with and without diverse learning needs and disabilities (photo supplied)

If anyone would like to support the program, Judy suggests donating directly to Keys of Life which also offers training to music teachers and therapists of students with diverse learning needs and disabilities. “Any teacher who might be working with a child or with children who doesn’t fit the mainstream mould might benefit from exploring what Keys of Life has to offer.”

“As Welcome Sessions are a new thing and people aren’t too sure what to expect yet, our work at this point is all about reaching people. We’ll put up some videos that will hopefully break a bit of ice, but being an innovative program it takes a bit of courage for kids to come along and we’re hoping to break that ice further a bit and expand it.”

The sessions will continue to run every Thursday night from 7:30pm – 9:00pm throughout the school term. To find out more for yourself or somebody you know or if you are planning to pop along and try a Welcome Session for yourself one Thursday, contact Judy: judy.quasitrad@icloud.com and make the world of the Celtic jamming your musical oyster.

Article by Deb Carveth, CMVic Copy Editor, in conversation with Judy Oleinikov.

Feature photo by Elijah M. Henderson on Unsplash; photo a Celtic Jam Session supplied

Squeezing out the Zest! The Music Makers adding flavour to the Murray Mallee

“We are quite isolated in terms of where we sit within Victoria. Given that we are a really diverse community, we punch well above our weight in terms of the people we have involved in performing arts and community music and I feel that we’re really just under the radar.” So says Kylie Livingston, Community Music Victoria’s Local Catalyst for Mildura, Sunraysia and the Mallee, an exciting role created through the Growing Community Music Project (GCM) to support and nurture a network of community music-making practitioners and participants, living in this north-westerly corner of Victoria.

It’s a region well known for its fruit and wine, a number of annual music and arts festivals, and its picturesque location along the banks of the mighty Murray River.  Kylie is keen to contribute to the riches of the existing cultural framework by championing the role of community music and is collaborating with other like-minded people to create inclusive and participatory music making opportunities that further support the health and wellbeing of this Victorian community. 

Kylie’s hope is that her role will support the evolution of a self-sustaining network for Sunraysia, Mildura, and the Mallee that is inclusive, eclectic, and open

For the past three years, Kylie has been president of the committee for Electric Light Theatre, an amateur inclusive theatre company for youth based in Mildura. Each year, ELT stages a Variety Show, a celebration of music and performance art involving up to 100 kids from a broad range of backgrounds.  As an experienced facilitator who loves connecting people, Kylie has been quick to get the ball rolling since joining the Community Music Victoria (CMVic) team six months ago, creating events and workshops that support community music leaders to develop their skills, re-energise and reactivate their practice and, in doing so, draw more people into a network of local music-makers. 

”Over the last couple of years, I think community groups have really struggled and floundered and might not feel they have the skills or the energy to support themselves, or to continue and flourish, and that networking aspect is really important. The feedback we are receiving is that people are unsure where to go to find out about what’s on.  Everyone is relying on Facebook and that’s a bit hit and miss.  Even though people may have numerous informal contacts, connecting and networking for the benefit and support of everyone can feel really hard.”

To overcome the seemingly false sense of security fed us all by Facebook, Kylie is encouraging people to utilise the What’s On Mildura website as an alternative, free and consistent approach to marketing local community music-making events and opportunities in the area.

Kylie’s hope is that her role will support the evolution of a self-sustaining network for Sunraysia, Mildura and the Mallee that is inclusive, eclectic and open, and which continues to grow after CMVic’s immediate involvement in the region ends; a network where people feel stronger together, sharing and fostering a culture of inclusion that acknowledges and meets individual needs so that everyone can feel safe and welcome to participate without barriers or judgement.

“This is a very multicultural community, we have a big number of First Nations people and refugees from various regions and over the last ten years the area has become far more ethnically diverse, however we don’t tend to see that diversity represented in our audiences and participants.” 

Kylie is supported in her role by a dedicated local action team of community music activists who each take time out of their busy lives to act as consultants for GCM. “There’s lively conversation at 7:30am on a Monday morning each month”, Kylie laughs. This early bird time slot is a testimony to the conviction and passion shared by the group who willingly swap breakfast for brainstorming.  

“We’ve got a music therapist who is very involved in community music, a person who also works in disability, a music teacher in a primary school, a community place maker who is a First Nations woman which is great, and a member of Mildura Strings, who is really fantastic also.  As well as this core group, I’ve spent lots of time having discussions with community music leaders and participants around the region. This means that we’ve been able to hit the ground running as we have contacts through our connections back into the community, who are also advocates for GCM and CMVic.”

An excellent example of this took place on a chilly, clear Saturday, back in the middle of June. In collaboration with Mildura Rural City Council, Mildura Riverfront, and members of the local action group, Kylie facilitated ‘Winter Solstice’, a midwinter celebration for the community with opportunities to enjoy music and art along the riverfront in Mildura. 

Waking up to a beautiful, sunny morning following days of clouds and rain, Kylie took the opportunity to maximise the good weather feels of the day with one final push of publicity to everyone out enjoying the sunshine. It paid off and Kylie estimates that somewhere between 500 and 700 people attended the Winter Solstice, later that evening.

“We wanted it to be as inclusive as possible. There were a lot of people working together to make the night a success, including volunteers from the community and local organisations. There was a Drum Circle with Catherine Threlfall, and a mix of groups from the community. Sunraysed Voices performed and we also had Sunraysia Irish Dancers and a mix of buskers and professionals. There was Art with Missy who ran craft activities with the kids, there were fire twirlers and a smoking ceremony at the beginning which got everything started, including a big campfire. It was great to see so many age groups represented and probably different demographics as well.” 

Over the course of the evening the Lions Club cooked up 400 sausages and the chef from the Sunraysia Mallee Ethnic Communities Council’s food relief program ladled out 500 serves of soup!

Kylie says, “the fact we got that many people along on such a dark winter’s night shows that there is a real interest and need for participatory music and activity in our community. There was a real sense of community and connection.”

To stay informed about forthcoming events and networking opportunities for music-makers in Mildura, Sunraysia and the Mallee, join the Murray Mallee Music Makers Facebook Page or drop a line to Kylie at CMVic and say hello!

Article by Deb Carveth, CMVic Copy Editor, with Kylie Livingston, CMVic Local Catalyst for Mildura, Sunraysia and the Mallee; photo credits: Mildura Rural City Council and Mildura Riverfront. A big thanks to everyone!

GCM in Mildura, Sunraysia, Mallee is supported by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust and the Department of Social Services Information Linkages and Capacity Social and Community Participation Stream.

Committing to the Committee Model: How being Incorporated Sustains the Yarra Valley Singers

“I’m totally supportive of the idea of committees of management, or whatever structures support the purpose of the singing group.”

These are the words of Belinda Gillam Derry, Musical Director of Yarra Valley Singers (YVS), a community choir established and singing together since 1988. When Belinda stepped into this role, back in 1996, Yarra Valley Singers was a unit of the Dandenong Ranges Music Council (DRMC) who at that time took care of what Belinda refers to as ‘all the official stuff’.

“The YVS committee looked after the things required by the group in its day to day running. They had a treasurer who collected fees but then passed them on to the treasurer of the DRMC, they had a president and a music librarian; members of the committee worked to ensure that the group were covered for everything they needed to do performances which back then were mainly small, local gigs.”

In the early 2000s, the committee decided to incorporate the group in its own right. 

Part of the reason for this was geographic; the DRMC is based in Upwey and the Yarra Valley Singers are in Lilydale but the members were increasingly not from the Dandenong Ranges, they were coming from the Yarra Valley and further and further out. “The Yarra Valley Singers started doing their own performances so there was increasingly cash from the office box and logistics like taking it down to deposit in Upwey or at the bank were beginning to become an issue”. 

At that point the committee had to become an official committee of management in an incorporated association and the group became Yarra Valley Singers Incorporated. They appointed a president and vice president, a secretary and treasurer as well as general committee members, basically adopting the DRMC model.  Belinda felt this support sustained her both musically and personally from the start, something she continued to benefit from even when she stepped away from the choir for a few years due to ill health.

“I think in these days when lots of people don’t attend church, that in a way these sorts of groups have taken over. ‘Community’ is definitely the word I would use to describe Yarra Valley Singers, which I know exists within so many other singing groups too. Sometimes it feels there’s a bit of a divide between formal choirs and less formal singing groups but the one thing that I think definitely unites groups is this sense of community that comes about through singing together. The Yarra Valley Singers sits very comfortably under the Australian National Choral Association model and I think we very much fit under the ethos of Community Music Victoria too with regards to how inclusive we are, and how much we look after each other between rehearsals.”

Belinda is highly tuned in to the roles filled by each committee member. “Just knowing that they are doing them means I don’t need to think about those things and can concentrate fully on being the Musical Director, although I will always jump in and help when it’s needed”. 

The Yarra Valley Singers’ committee actively seeks to promote sustainability by training up new people to take over different roles and comprises volunteers from within the choir which, with around 60 members currently (100+ pre-Covid) is still a big pool of people to draw from. “If we feel that people have some expertise which they feel a bit shy about sharing, or which they perhaps don’t even realise, we tap them on the shoulder and ask if they would like to come on the committee. We try to be as inclusive as possible, for example we now have two people who identify as living with disabilities on the committee of management. Having people with a broad range of perspectives and experiences is really important.” 

When Covid struck, the lights went out for many choirs and the return to singing proved an extremely fraught and frustrating period for many individual leaders who felt significant responsibility about exposing their singers to risk, coupled with further stress arising from a distinct lack of clear government directives about how best to proceed. 

For Belinda and the Yarra Valley Singers, this stress was immediately reduced because it was shared, and because of the collective decision-making capacity of the committee.

As Belinda says, “We actively seek out different viewpoints, so within the committee we have people who continue to feel risk averse, and we also have people with expertise in interpreting the advice provided by the DHHS. We have a COVIDSafe plan which includes social distancing, maximising ventilation and singing in 25-minute blocks, with air purifiers cranked up to maximum in between.  And now all rehearsals are offered on Zoom as well as in person so everyone can stay connected with the rehearsals however they feel comfortable. “

The committee has decided to maintain a hybrid model of delivery indefinitely. “Being an older group we have always had people who are sick or who have been unable to travel due to bad weather in the Yarra Valley or the Dandenongs. Doing it this way, every person can attend live, either in person or on Zoom and we also record the rehearsals which are available for two weeks afterwards for people to catch up.”

Belinda acknowledges the significant amount of extra work this incurs, both for herself and for everyone else, and how this agility wouldn’t have been as feasible without support from a huge group of people. 

“Setting up choir has changed radically since Covid. It’s no longer a case of just putting out the chairs, there’s all the tech to set up, we’ve got people opening windows and doors, we’ve got people checking everyone in and it takes half an hour.” 

Up until Covid struck, the Yarra Valley Singers committee conducted annual member surveys to determine the reasons why people came to choir, what they wanted to gain from the experience, and basic demographic information such as age and any barriers to participation people may have been experiencing. Belinda and the committee then worked to address as many barriers as they could, so they knew as they went into the first lockdown, that people came to choir for social reasons as much as musical reasons. 

“Even though we are a choir, the social aspect scores equally as highly as the artistic aspect and that has been the case over a number of years, so we knew it was really important to keep people socially connected in lockdown because for many of them, choir was the only thing they did socially. That’s why we worked so hard to get online rehearsals  up so quickly.”

The committee also committed to keeping everyone employed by the choir on the payroll throughout lockdown, something Belinda acknowledges was ‘just so amazing’. 

“Admittedly, being a group that’s been going for some time there were some financial reserves in the bank but they said ‘okay, we can’t do performances, we can’t do rehearsals at the moment but we would like to keep paying you what you would get if you were coming to rehearsals. Which then gave me the confidence to say,”Well, you know what? I have never done a rehearsal online before in my life, but I’m willing to give it a crack.”

Belinda believes that for committees to operate at maximum efficiency, it is important for members not to feel tethered to their role, but to remain fluid. “They all have job descriptions but these are reviewed annually and they adapt and change.  For example, we didn’t need an IT manager prior to Covid!” 

This versatility extends to the way the singers, well, sing!  “Last year we did a wedding between lockdowns. It was outdoors and for the first time ever we sang along to a backing track. It was a surprise for the bride set up by her father. We couldn’t set up the keyboard, we couldn’t do a rehearsal at the venue or anything. It was all really unusual for us as we used to always have live accompaniment, but because we did it and it was so successful, we realised, ‘Well hey, this might work for us as we come out of lockdown’! ”

The committee was so convinced by this approach that the choir cancelled all indoor performances for the rest of the year (given they were pretty sure they wouldn’t happen anyway), applied for a grant and purchased backing tracks and battery-operated outdoor speakers. They learnt all of the parts via Zoom, and when lockdown finally lifted in November last year, Yarra Valley Singers had only two in person rehearsals and then seven performances in just four weeks because they were, as Belinda describes, ‘all ready to do it!’. 

“That again was the committee who were prepared to pivot completely, apply for grants and just go for it.  Incidentally, that’s another benefit of being an incorporated association; ie being able to apply for grants without needing to be auspiced by another body.  Having a formal structure can give funding bodies more confidence that you will be responsible with their grant money.  In our case, Yarra Ranges Council was extremely supportive with regards to grants to keep us going during lockdowns.”

For anyone wondering whether the move to become an incorporated group and elect a committee is worthwhile for their own group, Belinda believes that an important consideration is the question of ownership:

“It depends on who feels they have ownership of the group and who, ultimately, will step up to make sure it continues. Is ownership centred around the leader or is it centred around the people in the group? I don’t think it is a bad way to be one way or the other, because you don’t necessarily set something up thinking that it’s going to go on forever, and some groups are meant to have their time and then not continue, which is part of their charm.  When I was sick, the choir continued for four years with a different musical director.  This wouldn’t have happened if they were relying on me to do everything, but it was possible because of the structure at the time.”

Belinda’s final piece of advice is that the structure of the organising support should always fit the goals of the group.

“Having an incorporated group and a committee of management and things like that won’t be appropriate for smaller singing groups whose goal is to get together and sing for Christmas, for example. They might be better served by just having someone to collect fees, put out the chairs for rehearsal and check everyone’s vaccination certificates.  But for groups which want to continue operating and develop artistically, it’s great if the organisational load can be spread amongst others so the Musical Director can concentrate more on the musical aspects.”

By Deb Carveth, online editor for CMVic in collaboration with Belinda Gillam Derry

For information on how to join Yarra Valley Singers, click here

Featured image: Yarra Valley Singers singing at Montrose Market in November 2021, supplied by Belinda Gillam Derry

CresFest: The New Folk & Roots Music & Dance Festival Putting Creswick on the Map

“There’s music everywhere!” says Judy Turner, convenor of the inaugural CresFest taking place between April 1-3.  For two days, the township of Creswick is throwing open its arms and its doors and inviting visitors to savour two of life’s transformative pleasures: music and dance. CresFest will celebrate the return of live music and performance while showcasing the beauty of Creswick’s historic architecture, its pubs, cafes and public spaces and the great beauty of the Central Victorian landscape. 

Judy’s desire to entice visitors to Creswick arose from her feeling it was underused, underknown and underappreciated with a plethora of lovely buildings just waiting for someone to bring a festival to town, and to share the talents and spirit of the local community with a broader audience. Drawing on a lifetime’s experience of coordinating festivals, fundraisers and cultural events for a broad range of audiences, Judy decided it was time to drop a big old pin and mark Creswick out on the map.

“People tend to dash through Creswick on their way to somewhere else and we want it to be a bit more known”, says Judy. “The Goldfields region is a beautiful place to come and explore, people can stay in Ballarat, Daylesford or Clunes and be here for the festival in fifteen minutes. It’s a beautiful part of the world to visit and CresFest is happening at a beautiful time of the year.”

Picture source: http://www.cresfest.com.au

A festival committee was formed of like-minded locals from Creswick Folk Club, the Neighbourhood Centre, Leavers Wine bar where open mic nights have run for many years, and the Creswick Theatre Company. Together, they have fought for funding and been shaping the show, growing it from the ground up for many, many months. CresFest now has an enviable program which has grown to include 360 musicians.

In addition to a phenomenal line up of headline acts including Emma Donovan and The Putbacks, Eric Bogle Trio, The Maes, Lucy Wise, Fiona Ross, Kee’ahn and oodles of others, CresFest offers a whole other program – the Armband Program – filled with an exciting range of opportunities for community participation. 

Festival goers can sing along with the Creswick Chorus led by Stella Savvy, strum and hum in the Creswick Ukestra led by Jen Hawley, strike out with Strat and Lyndal’s street band, and the Creswick Brass Band or be blown away by a Bollywood Dance ensemble. In addition to all of this and more, CresFest will include a series of live theatre shows called ‘Stories of Us’, funded by Festivals Australia, interspersed with short films in which music plays a key role. 

A kids’ choir has been created with funding from a local family and open mics will be running all weekend, some hosted by the alumni of Youthrive, a statewide group based in Creswick working to support kids from rural areas in supporting their education and bringing their skills back home. For lovers of flips, tricks and ollies there is a YMCA skate competition included in Sunday’s program.

The festival’s ticketing model gives punters the choice of buying a pass for all of the activities taking place in and around the town as part of the Armband Program, with an additional ticket required for access into the Town Hall where the headline acts will be playing across the weekend, offering what Judy calls ‘two levels of commitment’.

“There’s also heaps of free stuff” Judy says, “for people passing through or wanting to dip their toe in the water. The famous Creswick market will be home to an outdoor stage which in turn will host Saturday Breakfast from Ballarat ABC in a first live OB from Creswick.”

In addition to putting Creswick on the map, the committee hopes CresFest will increase the role and prevalence of shared participatory music making and performance for people of all ages within the Creswick community as well as communities from the surrounding small towns who have been brought into the festival fold. 

As Judy says, “that idea that people love getting together to sing, play and perform has been at the heart of what I’ve been doing all my life.” 

Planning this event has taken nerves of steel, and CresFest appears to have struck lucky in being able to proceed in a window of opportunity when other regional town-based festivals held earlier in the year had to be cancelled. As Judy says, “everything is fraught when you’re surrounded by uncertainty, particularly when it’s the first time doing something”. Undeterred, Judy has been driven on by holding in mind the sheer joy that making music and performing with others can bring, a bug she caught back in the 70s when she began performing at folk festivals:

“For me, it is really all about amateur music and the power of performance. I just love the atmosphere and the chance to sit down and play and play and play until I can’t play anymore, and I like to provide that for other people.”

The inclusive and collaborative culture of CresFest extends beyond the music and dance. Local businesses have provided backing and volunteers of all ages have been drafted from across the community with plenty more still needed. 

“We have a terrific team of people on the job, a mix of younger professionals and older volunteers, and it has worked really well and everyone is doing a terrific job. If anyone would like to be involved we could do with more stage managers, front of house people, we need people to serve the food in the artists’ green room, we need trouble shooters who can be runners, we need gofers, and before that we need people to put up posters!” 

CresFest sounds an incredible way to spend a weekend. For ticket bookings and information about how to participate in the festival – become a CresFest volunteer, put up posters or offer a billet to a visiting act – click here, and and be sure to try and get yourself and everyone you know there.

CresFest: April 1-3, 2022. Creswick is just 1.5 hours’ drive from Melbourne, between Daylesford and Ballarat. It is accessible via V/Line on the Maryborough route. For more information visit http://www.vline.com.au or call 1800 800 007

Written by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for Community Music Victoria with Judy Turner

Good Vibrations: How the infectious energy of John Lane makes life feel better

All my training has been on the job and I have learnt it by doing it… I always loved singing and I loved acting and I liked being the centre of attention, I guess, whether it was in music or theatre.” This love of the limelight may have been a starting point, but John Lane has spent his entire working life bringing others into the frame to experience the joy of participation that has perpetuated his own effervescent, irrepressible energy and enthusiasm for community arts practice.

“Being in musical vibration together with others is the closest I get to being really spiritual, that’s my spiritual observance, it’s why I like going to the footy; if your team wins you get to sing with 20,000 people! This world with all this pain and sorrow also has all this beauty and one way of plugging into that, viscerally, is to be vibrating in harmony together.”

Having learned piano as a child, John branched out into trumpet and the French horn at secondary school before teaching himself to play the guitar, inspired by the likes of Neil Young and Bob Dylan. “I took every opportunity I could to be a part of productions, both at school and university where I was very much into musical theatre.” 

After three years of medical school, John decided to take a gap year to try and get theatre out of his system. This was a plan destined never to work. He was offered a job in Brisbane and spent three immersive years touring political musical comedy shows with the Popular Theatre Troupe, also organising and running drama workshops and improvisations based on what he had been doing in student theatre workshops, back in Melbourne. John found he couldn’t stop soaking up skills and knowledge in whatever ways he could from whomever he could.  “I worked my chops up by just ‘doing it’ and learning on the job from watching other people.”

“This world with all this pain and sorrow also has all this beauty and one way of plugging into that, viscerally, is to be vibrating in harmony together.”

While living in Queensland, John bumped into a fella named Linsey Pollak and the two of them went busking together; John played tenor saxophone and Linsey played a broom, the end of which he’d turned into a flute (of course). “We played songs that he had written, and some that we both knew, and it was Linsey who first said to me ‘you could write your own songs!’” Having been given his first lessons in the ukulele by Joe Geia from the band ‘No Fixed Address‘, John would carry his banjolele with him everywhere he went – wearing it slung around his back, ready to whip out at any point and pair it with a quick bit of kazoo to entertain people at festivals or in the streets, in the piazzas of Rome, Bologna and Perugia perhaps, and even on a 24 hour bus trip from Dharamsala to Kashmir.

“The only real formal performance training I did was later on, with the Nanjing Acrobats of China, spending six days a week with them for three months in Wodonga, practising alongside members of the Fruit Fly Circus and Circus Oz. I was open to anything and everything and by that stage was feeling ‘this is so much fun, everyone should have this opportunity’. ”

John’s primary focus became finding ways for other people to experience the joy that he’d had of participating and being ‘in it’. For the first ten years of his working life, John acknowledges that he was very lucky to have been employed full time doing theatre with the type of community-based theatre companies where you weren’t just an actor, you were involved in writing the material, creating sets and props and anything and everything else.

“With West Theatre we went into housing commissions, we did projects with the Vietnamese Community at a time when they had newly arrived in Australia, we worked with the Nurses Union, we put on these very professional big community shows. There was a collective of between 7 and 12 professional theatre makers and together we would run events that involved dozens to hundreds of people in the community, putting on shows that were sometimes political, often based around personal and local issues; and community music was always a big part of that work.”

By this point it was the mid-80s and John became heavily involved in festivals around Melbourne and across Victoria. “Festivals were the most obvious opportunity for lots and lots of people to participate in a cultural event. These could be run as projects with artists in schools and artists in the community that culminated in a festival.”

Towards the end of a long period of freelancing, one of the jobs John started doing in 2000 was working for the Royal Children’s Hospital. “They had acquired funding from VicHealth to engage professional arts facilitators to work in schools and they were looking for a coordinator. I got that gig which was 2 days a week for 6 months and this kept going as an annual contract job among the many other jobs I was doing like the Darebin Music Feast, the Kites Festival and the Kew Festival, and stuff for the Royal Melbourne Show and City of Melbourne.”

Unsurprisingly, John had also learned to juggle by this point which came in handy and helped him to keep all these professional balls in the air at the same time, as well as beanbags, skittles, fruit, kitchen knives and whatever else came to hand.

Striving to support the voice of people who had been oppressed or suppressed drove John’s passion for agitprop theatre.

“It was therapeutic for me to be involved with music and with drama and I was always really interested in the application of creative arts techniques to psychological medicine, which I had only just begun to research as part of my medical training. This stuck with me and became a personal political goal of doing this type of work because of its benefit to people’s mental health… including mine!”

The Royal Children’s Hospital’s “Festival for Healthy Living” (FHL) program was an embodiment of this philosophy, and upon taking up a newly created salaried role of FHL Artistic Coordinator, by 2004 John found he had gone full circle from leaving medical school in 1976 back to working within a hospital where he remained until his retirement from that post in October 2021. 

So how did John keep up his energy? “Keeping a role for myself as a hands-on participant, even when I was coordinating projects, was vital for me. I’d end up being an MC or I’d pop up in the band playing the trumpet or tenor horn, keyboards or uke. I think my work as an overall coordinator suffered sometimes because I was so obsessed with being in things, but I gradually realised I didn’t need to be front and centre and that my role in life as I got older was in being a facilitator and capacity builder.”

John firmly believes that some of the best capacity building happens by learning on the job, side by side with someone who is really experienced. “I would be there alongside emerging artists, doing the stilt walking or juggling workshops, or building a gigantic puppet or encouraging kids in a songwriting session. At other times the job was all about writing funding submissions or facilitating steering committees, but doing only that would never last very long with me and I had to find at least some time to keep working on the ground. It was a crazy life rushing hither and thither!”

Finding ways to help people feel better, and experience wellness from connecting with other people in their communities, schools or families, working for the Royal Children’s Hospital proved to be a great way in for John to build countless productive partnerships in over 30 different communities across Victoria. More recently, working closely with local agencies, under the RCH/FHL banner the annual Dream Big Festival was established in Melton. This was run for the first time in 2015, with John at the helm as Artistic Director.

A year later, John decided he needed more brass back in his life and joined Melbourne-based street band, Havana Palava (cos he obviously had so much spare time on his hands). There he met Lyndal Chambers who at that time was coordinating CMVic’s StreetSounds project. As part of a collaboration between StreetSounds and the Dream Big Festival, together they established The Fabulous Meltones Street Band.

Facilitating the band was an opportunity for John to embrace participatory music-making and perform on a regular basis while bringing together community players of brass, strings, percussion and more, in a riot of colour and sound. The band has played at the Dream Big Festival each year, and at dozens of other community events including the local Djerriwarrh Festival, and also featured in spectacular appearances at Geelong After Dark for three consecutive years.

Since his ‘rewirement’ last month, John has been reflecting back on all of this history and allowing himself to dream of what might come next.

“In the future I do see myself as always wanting to get community music to happen with people of all ages.”

If history is anything to go by, John won’t be sitting still in one place for very long before his energy fizzes over and propels him towards his next adventure. There may be kazoos… Watch this space!

Written by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for Community Music Victoria, with John Lane

Photos supplied

Going back to U-Bass-ics, with Oli Hinton

Nine years ago or thereabouts, Oli Hinton retired from UK academia and made the move to Australia for what began as a sabbatical holiday. Oli and his partner, Jess, had known Jane Coker for many years through playing community music back in the UK.

“We got in touch with Jane when we arrived in Australia and Jane said, ‘fantastic, can you come and volunteer for CMVic?’” Oli laughs.  

By the time the CMVic coordinator role came up some months later, the winning combo of life down under and volunteering at CMVic-bug had well and truly bitten and Oli decided retirement could wait and that here was an opportunity for him to get his teeth into something new and exciting.

“I wanted to do something even more interesting than I had been doing and working for something I feel passionate about which is playing music.”

Yet to deploy full-holiday mode, Oli embraced his new life and kept busy putting down roots and playing baritone sax in Havana Palava, a local street band. In what seems like no time at all he got to know more about the different music-making opportunities in and around Melbourne and started playing his accordion again with The Footscray Gypsy Orchestra. “I got to know more and more of the wonderful community that’s involved in community music in Victoria and I just feel that I have been incredibly fortunate.”

Baritone Saxophones and accordions aren’t known for being quiet instruments so how did a small, stringed instrument like the ukulele find its way to Oli’s heart? “We found ourselves often in the company of other people who were playing ukuleles and none of the other instruments we played were really suitable for playing alongside them so we thought, if we can’t beat ‘em we’ll join ‘em!”

Oli and Jess got themselves soprano ukuleles and started playing along, but Oli quickly found he missed playing the bass rhythm lines, and the strings of the little ukulele hurt his fingers.

“I kept talking about the U-bass and then Jess bought me one for Christmas and it arrived and I’ve never looked back, it is faaaabulous!”

Having never played a string instrument of that sort before, Oli found it took him a while to get to grips with all the different technical challenges and fundamental things like knowing the strings and where the notes were. “In my usual way of learning I did it by learning one tune and then another tune, and another tune and then I thought, ‘ah, I’m getting the general idea here!’ “

Oli confesses this is the way he’s learnt to play every instrument. “The great thing about learning by playing a tune and then another tune is that you get instant results!”.  He’s also quick to point out that a few lessons from someone who’s been playing for many years is also incredibly valuable.

As well as playing music, Oli has had a lot of fun arranging tunes for different street bands which has given his knowledge of music theory a good workout. “I’ve had to really get to grips with the keys of different instruments and chords and harmonies and actually as a bass player, you’re much more aware of what the notes are and the progression of the chords.” This experience has even led Oli to compose a small ditty for the BUF lunchtime concert on Saturday – something he never dreamed of doing in the past!

In considering the fundamental, scaffolding role of the bass, Oli sounds amused as he admits that played really wrong it can actually destroy a tune but has realised if you carry on with aplomb, things will generally be okay.

“From playing bass the most important thing I’ve learned is to keep plucking something in time and the great thing about bass is the ear isn’t very good at determining the bass notes…if you ever try to tune a bass instrument using your ears it’s really hard! Nearly all bass tuning is done with a gadget, by me anyway, and if you hit a bum note it’s fairly easy to get away with it!”

On Saturday, Oli will be running a workshop for absolute beginners and has promised that by the end of it, everyone will be able to play a tune. “Because I’ve said this is a workshop for absolute beginners, I’m going to start by which end you hold it! I can still remember how surprisingly hard I found certain things when I started, so I’m going to try and pull those out.” For example, string damping; when you start out you think ‘oh no, I’ve got to stop that horrible noise happening!’ The strings play off each other and you can get intermediate harmonics happening between them.”

Another thing Oli noticed when he started playing U-bass in a uke group was that rarely are you presented with the tabs for the bass chords of a tune. “So what happens is the leader of the group will say ‘let’s play so and so’ and you flick to the page and of course, you’ve got the normal presentation of lyrics and chords, and you then have to work from that to something which makes sense. It’s not like reading the exact bass line. You may be really lucky and it’ll be a tune you’re familiar with and you’re familiar with the bass line that goes with it, and so you can at least get the feel for what it should be.. or you might not!”

Oli is keen to acknowledge the joys and the challenges of online music workshops for everyone. “We know it can’t be as good as being together live cos you miss the interaction where you’re playing off each other and can see what each person is doing and developing things alongside them at the right pace, and that’s hard on zoom. But we’ve found that people get loads of fun from them. Things may go a bit slow or too fast from time to time but there’s always the opportunity to follow up!”

What Oli hopes more than anything is that anyone who comes to his workshop this Saturday leaves thinking ‘yep I’m going to get a U-bass and I’m going to take it along to my group’… cos they’ll have so much fun with it!

By Deb Carveth, Online Editor for CMVic, with Oli Hinton, CMVic Coordinator

**BUF took place online on Saturday 25 September. Take a look at what happened here: https://cmvic.org.au/whats-on/boroondara-uke-festival-past-eventl

Uke Lovers Get inTo the BUF in Ashburton

Boroondara Ukulele Festival (BUF) was born of Margaret Crichton’s desire to bring something to an area of Melbourne where, for some years, she has been running a number of community music groups. Back when plans were evolving for BUF, COVID wasn’t even a thing. Having experienced restrictions derail so many other face to face events since then,  Margaret, who is a program coordinator for CMVic, has been making ‘contingency plan after contingency plan’ to ensure the show goes on.

If by the end of September,  BUF is not able to go ahead ‘in real life’ then depending on the levels of regulations, Margaret and the CMVic team are ready, with a myriad of creative ways tucked up their sleeves to ensure its delivery, either entirely online, or as a hybrid event.  

“We all need to be able to plan things, we need it for our personal wellbeing, we need to have something to look forward and aspire to… it’s a bit like having that recipe where you go, ooh I’d love to make it but I haven’t got quite those ingredients I’ll just substitute this, and it might not be the same but it will still be amazing.”

BUF will feature a range of workshop topics offered by a host of leaders from across Victoria. There will be banjo techniques for ukulele and banjolele by Julie Bradley from Gippsland, Dan McEoin, the man behind the Hills Ukulele Festival and current president of AUTLA will be teaching picking techniques, Bruce Watson will be doing what he’s calling “I’ve got rhythm, Uke got rhythm” and running a session of his surely world-famous-by now, Ukeoke. Oli Hinton and Dave Rackham will be running bass workshops. 

As Margaret points out, “if you’ve got an instrument with four strings or even a guitar handy you’ll be able to have a go at the bass workshops, you won’t necessarily need to have a bass ukulele. And if BUF runs online, remember when you’re in a Zoom room no-one else can hear but the cat, you so you’ll be able to pick up a lot of techniques for when you can get your hands on a bass.”

Margaret will be offering a beginners workshop where there will be ukuleles and some basses to borrow for anyone coming along who has never played before. “If people come along to my workshop knowing nothing, they’ll be able to play something by the end of it, and if they know a little bit, they’ll leave knowing how to play a little bit more”.

Nicki Johnson and Craig Barrie will be leading a song writing workshop for ukulele, and the day will end with Tom Jackson leading a Q&A session to answer any uke-related questions to wrap things up.

What Margaret wants more than anything is for people to come to BUF and have a really good time, to learn new skills and make new connections.

“Should we all still be in lockdown,  connection is what we’ll need. If we can bring some brightness into people’s days – even if they can’t be in the room with us literally, we’ll bring them into our rooms.”

BUF is a testimony to Margaret’s longstanding love for the humble ukulele which began back when she was a child. “When I was about 10, I wanted a guitar but we couldn’t afford one so I had to save up. In the meantime I got a ukulele and played that for a little while. Then, eight or nine years ago, when ukulele really took off, I decided to get another one and predictably it was purple…” The CMVic queen of all things purple and a staunch devotee of stringed instruments from ukes to harps, Margaret still loves the uke’s accessibility for people of all ages and all levels of ability. “It doesn’t really matter what age you are, you can pick it up and instantly play a song.”

Margaret with one of her trusty four-stringed friends

Community Music Victoria will host BUF on September 24-25 in partnership with AUTLA and Pat’s Music. For all of the info click here and watch the CMVic socials for booking details, coming soon!

Written by Deb Carveth, CMVic Online Editor, with Margaret Crichton, CMVic Program Coordinator

Feature photo: Bennettswood Ukulele Groups and Singalong and Stringalong (BUGSS) at Hawthorn Market, supplied