CMVic Celebrates Make Music Day ’21 with Optimism & Ukeoke!

Once again on June 21^st, Make Music Day Australia will bring together friends, colleagues, strangers and neighbours to share joy and connection in a free celebration of music making for musicians of all levels using a glorious smorgasbord of styles, both online and -restrictions permitting – face to face. This year’s world wide event is about optimistically embracing uncertainty and will feature a global live stream of events that include an International Leaf Blowing Symposium, Window Serenades, Drum Battles, Folk Challenges, Song Swaps and more, all taking place on the day itself and over the preceding weekend.

As a proud foundation partner in this annual celebration of music, CMVic has been busy encouraging community music leaders from across Victoria to register their June events or upload a new or recent video to showcase their group on the Make Music Day Portal.

Craig Barrie, Digital and Strategic Communications Coordinator for Community Music Victoria says, “A number of CMVic members will be sharing the musical joy locally, despite the challenges being thrown at us all by lockdown and wild storms. With the power still out in some parts of Victoria, I hope everyone is doing okay!”

To keep everyone nourished and connected during this time of uncertainty, CMVic has focussed on running several online community events to promote and celebrate Make Music Day. June began with a Pizza Party Video Showcase, hosted by Craig with CMVic’s Program Coordinator, Nicki Johnson. The duo conducted a series of live, online interviews with community music leaders talking about their virtual choir and band projects which emerged as poignant, defiant and cathartic responses to last year’s long lockdown.

“It was inspiring and humbling to talk with leaders about what these projects meant for their groups, and for them personally. I am in awe of the effort and work leaders put in to maintain social connections between their participants over the last 18 months.”

At 5pm this Sunday, June 20, CMVic will be running a special Make Music Day ‘Ukeoke with Bruce Watson and Friends’ – a virtual version of Bruce’s popular sessions at CMVic’s Grantville music camp.

Events like these are CMVic’s strength- encouraging participation at all levels – and Bruce personifies the joy of making music together.

– Craig Barrie

This free event will offer uke enthusiasts everywhere the opportunity to join Bruce and friends to sing and strum old favourites and learn some hot new tunes to bring warmth and light into the shortest day.

Events like these are CMVic’s strength – encouraging participation at all levels – and Bruce personifies the joy of making music together. Nicki and Craig will also be sharing a couple of songs, as will Margaret Crichton; John Howard and Michelle Fox. This team is now highly experienced at leading online sessions, and Craig has been practicing his delivery format all week to ensure everyone will be able to see all of the vital bits – words, chords and leader – onscreen at the same time:

“As Digital Coordinator, my job on the day is to ensure both lovely sound and clear video, so people can luxuriate in the music. Ideally I hope participants completely forget they are online and will be transported to the Grantville Homestead!“

Here’s a sneak peak of how we’ll be sharing the music… Sit back and strum and sing with your very own page turner!

Having taken on the role of Digital Coordinator at the height of the 2020 lockdown, Craig knows only too well that it takes a bit of “technical jiggery-pokery” to ensure people can both see the “chirds” (i.e. chords and words) and the presenter, and has had plenty of practice at getting this right. This weekend’s Ukeoke will see Craig back on the buttons and flexing his tech skills to deliver some online magic once more.

“Below is a photo of the software I use for live streaming. It is called Open Broadcast Software (OBS) and it is used for all sorts of online events, from hugely popular “gamers” with millions of international viewers to church services and ceremonies.”

You can watch CMVic Ukeoke with Bruce Watson and Friends live (and go back and watch it again later!) here: https://www.facebook.com/cmv.music/live

By Deb Carveth, CMVic Online Editor Coordinator, with Craig Barrie, CMVic Digital & Strategic Communications Coordinator

CMVic is proud to be foundation partners of Make Music Day Australia, a celebration of participatory music making, alongside The Australian Music Association (AMA), Make Music Alliance, and APRA/AMCOS. For all of the info about Make Music Day Australia and to see what else is happening around the world, visit https://makemusicaustralia.org.au/

Ballarat Choral Society Researches Safe Ways of Singing Together Again

In a quest to know if and how it could be safe to all sing together again, Ballarat Choral Society applied for funding from Regional Arts Victoria to conduct some research of their own. “What we were anxious about was that there didn’t appear to be any specific information coming through for choirs” says Merle Hathaway, President of the Ballarat Choral Society (BCS), a non-auditioned community choir with over 100 singers on the books.

“To just not sing any more is not really a good idea when you look at all of the health benefits associated with it. Our idea was to form a small team of people with expertise in all sorts of different areas to work out whether it was at all safe for us all to sing together and also to explore whether there was any sort of technology we could use which would enable us to sing in the one space.”

The resulting Singing Together Again (STA) team comprises Professor Catherine Bennett, Chair of Epidemiology at Deakin University; civil engineer Michael Knowles, sound recording expert Rex Hardware, and BCS choir members Brian Sala, an electronics engineer; Musical Director Helen Duggan, and Merle, who is the project manager. “We got the grant and then realised that we didn’t have an epidemiologist on the team”, Merle laughs.  “We didn’t have anyone from the world of health at all. Somebody had heard Professor Catherine Dennis speaking so we asked her and to our surprise she said yes.”

L-R: Helen Duggan (BCS Musical Director), Professor Catherine Bennett, Brian Sala (electronics engineer, Vice Pres & bass singer), Rex Hardware (sound engineer), Mike Knowles (civil engineer) and Merle Hathaway (project manager, & President of  BCS). Photo supplied

In this world-first project, the plan was always to share the findings with other singing groups and choirs.

“I came across a bunch of people singing in a park recently, all side by side and sharing the same piece of music. They were having a lovely time and singing at the top of their voices, but the way they were doing it was too risky and so we started to think it was time to begin sharing the findings of our research with singers and singing groups everywhere.”   

Over the course of the past year, the STA team has followed what’s been going on around the world and staying on top of the data emerging from world research around aerosol dispersal and voice projection, translating all of the associated findings and risks into a COVID safe plan that takes a whole range of things into account.

The findings of their research to date recommends singing in a well-ventilated space, limiting indoor singing time to 20 minutes, and spacing singers 2 metres apart with 3 metres between rows. Air movement and effective ventilation is key. BCS are also planning to conduct temperature checks at the door as a way to avoid complacency and as a reminder to themselves that the risk of infection is real and ever present.

Merle adds, “other advice from Professor Bennett has included using fans to blow out the space when you’re not in it during breaks between singing, when all of the singers have moved out of the rehearsal area. The time that you sing for is really critical too. Keep ‘solid singing’ to 20 minute blocks and then move out of the room and use fans to blast air through it before returning back in.”

Ballarat Choral Society is hunting for a space which fits this criteria and has even considering singing in underground car parks because they’re usually draughty spaces.  “In Ballarat the winters are quite cold so ideally we want to find a big space or a space that allows us to move from one place to another like a church hall attached to a church, or like the football oval where there’s indoor and outdoor spaces adjoining for singers to move between.”  

They were all set to try out a new venue – two adjacent halls – when the latest Victorian regulations postponed all gatherings for at least a week. The choir is also making a set of specially designed singers’ masks, with stiffening away from the face.

Merle and the team are also exploring ways to overcome the challenge of everyone effectively holding their parts whilst physically distanced. “We have some very strong singers and we also have people like me – I rely very heavily on the presence of having a very good singer behind me!”

One idea being considered is for singers to wear a headset which feeds the sound into a mixer and relays it back to the singers’ ears. While this would call for more funding, Merle is excited about the possibilities this technology could open up: “I think we could really have fun with it, we could try our underground carpark idea, each coming from different directions, we could try singing in the Botanic Gardens at a huge distance from each other like a flashmob while all remaining connected.”

To overcome the natural gravitational pull of navigating towards each other whilst singing, the BCS have found a lovely, low-tech solution to the problem. “A member has donated a set of sports field markers – yellow plastic discs – which we can place on the ground to give us all a nice bright reminder of where we should be standing!”

One thing which preoccupies Merle in the small hours of the morning is the hope that “we’ve got it right and what if we’ve got it wrong?”

It’s important to keep in mind that this is a live project, the findings being shared are what the team has discerned to date, and that precautions can be increased or reduced, for example the wearing of masks indoors, depending on the level of threat from COVID in the community at any point in time.

The STA team had expected to conclude their research in February but because of the fluidity of the whole situation, Merle believes that it is likely things will roll on beyond this point. As Merle says, when it comes to considering a world without any face-to-face community singing, “to do nothing is more risky; we’re better off to share what we know – to say it’s early days and to encourage other people to continue their own research as well… All we want to do is sing.”

L-R: Helen Duggan (BCS Musical Director), Brian Sala (electronics engineer, Vice Pres & bass singer), and Merle Hathaway ((project manager, & President of  BCS). Photo supplied

Stay tuned to STA research findings, updates and outcomes by joining BCS mailing list: info@ballaratchoralsociety.com

Article by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for Community Music Victoria, with Merle Hathaway, President of Ballarat Choral Society

‘Holy Night’: Celebrating Un-Silent Nights and the Holiness of Nature

During December in Australia, the summer nights are anything but silent. When we stop as the holidays start and feel able to enjoy moments of stillness and the time to listen as the sun sets, nature is audible in abundance all around us. The pobblebonks bonk, insects hum and buzz, and birds croon, squawk and call.

The wish to celebrate our gloriously noisy, midsummer nights motivated community singing leader, Rose Wilson, to write a version of Silent Night that is relevant to the festive season in Australia. Rose’s adaptation, Holy Night, is ethereal and beautiful. It sings of connection to the land and the spirituality of the season. It is a spinning, shimmering blank canvas onto which the listener can project memories of what has been and hopes for what is yet to come.

Rose, a community singing leader based in Newcastle, on the mid north coast of New South Wales, wrote and recorded the song as part of a bigger community project in her local area called The Christmas Bell.

“I remember thinking ‘well this is my opportunity to write and sing a Christmas carol, what is it going to say?’ I knew I wanted to do something around Silent Night and we have a dam and so many MANY frogs and I was sitting outside listening to them all, just thinking.”

Rose knew what she didn’t want to say. “I didn’t want to sing songs about presents or god, I could see all the things I didn’t want to say! Fortunately it emerged to me really clearly in the end.” Rose was keen to make her carol particular to Australia “but not shit.” Rose laughs.

“A lot of Australian Christmas carols don’t fill me with awe or pride or connection  and while I’m not religious I think the idea of a time to value something that is holy, whatever that means, or something which is bigger than us and something that is beautiful and allowing something to be awe-inspiring was what I was working towards. Doing something that felt powerful and big but that was in itself quite small. Then I realised that the nights in summer in Australia are absolutely not silent.”

Sitting in the dark and listening to the frogs, Rose was inspired to counteract the idea of Silent Night by playing all the noises filling the night sky. She went on to record all of the frogs and all of the insects and began playing these loops against the song, making up tunes and words and then ‘it happened’. “It emerged and clarified itself into two really clear partner songs.”

Rose continued to experiment, trying a version of Holy Night accompanied with harp and a version accompanied with piano but she found it was significantly more magic just using her voice and the backdrop of nature.

“I feel as though here in Australia we try to put the big energy of Christmas on top of a seasonal energy which is already really big because it’s the summer solstice – it’s huge, everything’s exploding! Couple that with the end of the year and our Christmases just feel so frantic because we’re not responding to the season.”

“All of our big holidays are seasonally wrong and so finding a way to acknowledge the bounty and the bigness of the life that is going on and being able to sit with a still energy, not a cold frozen energy, but an energy of awe and beauty and acknowledging its ‘holiness’ and its wonder was what I was thinking. All those kinds of thoughts.”

Rose felt ‘so grateful’ that her version of Silent Night – ‘Holy Night’ – emerged the way it did. “It ticked all the boxes I had. It acknowledges the traditional aspect of Christmas and something that’s particular to Australia without being crass or making me cringe.” Rose laughs again.

“It also references summer with a nod to the solstice and a time of reflection and holiness and beauty and the fact that we’re not the only things here. I like that the voice is so still and so calm and so flowing but the insects and the frogs are going crazy.”

The line that brings everything into focus for Rose is “with life singing that this is holy.”

“It’s saying that this too is holy, we are nothing without acknowledging that we are part of something bigger and that aspect has a physicality and a life as well.”

The song was written and recorded during November and released as part of The Christmas Bell project in December.

The music, the frogs and the cicadas from Holy Night are now offered by Rose as tracks for sharing with the world, and she would like nothing more than for them to be picked up, used and shared in the spirit of the season.  

“I don’t know whether anyone else will sing it, a few bits are really high but I’ve just put it all out there in the hope that maybe somebody would like to sing it one day!”

Written by Deb Carveth, online editor for Community Music Victoria, in conversation with Kate Wilson

Rose Wilson: Photo supplied

Rose Wilson runs 5 community choirs, and pre-covid an additional 4 school choirs) Port Macquarie): mixed choirs, women’s choirs and mums and bubs choirs. She is also the founder of unscarysinging.com

Access Rose’s recordings and a three part harmony score of Holy Night to sing with your choirs and singing groups is available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1p0ZLqgT7pIKsGd0VXBvHJSxAjYpNTYFs?fbclid=IwAR2obTS0CFOqCM5NIwbL80_5WAoriami-FWBrBAjHHHOUNmnVcp8YZebQ0E

Songs for Western Port Bay

By Laura Brearley

My husband Terry and I live on Phillip Island (Millowl) and we love Western Port Bay. We love its beauty and its stillness and we love its birds.

It is from this place of love that we have been writing songs, making films and bringing community members together though music in response to a proposal by AGL to moor a regasification plant at Crib Point and build a 60 kilometre gas pipeline from there to Pakenham. We want to celebrate the richness of life in Western Port and stand up for its protection.

We are now at a critical point in the community conversation. The issue has been in our awareness for years, but we have a short window now to gather our collective strength, listen to the science and do what we feel the future is asking of us. We strongly believe Western Port is not the right site for industrialisation. The eco-system of the Bay is too significant and fragile to risk the irreparable damage that would be caused. We respect the significance of the UNESCO Biosphere reserve and the Ramsar wetlands that support and sustain migratory birds and many other interconnected forms of life.

The COVID times we are living through have heightened our perceptions of what matters most and how interconnected we all are. The economic imperative is not the main narrative here. It is life itself and our collective responsibility to care for it. Wendell Berry has a version of the golden rule that applies in this situation.

‘Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you’, he writes. ‘Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.’

We will be including links to these films and songs in our written response to the Environmental Effects Statement and the call for submissions which is open and receiving submissions until August 26.

Here are links to three of Terry’s films which contain songs from the Western Port Bay Song Cycle, (below).

‘Blessings’ is a call for justice and a song of love for Western Port Bay. It recognises the future impact of decisions being made about the proposed AGL Regasification Plant in Western Port Bay and appeals to the best in everyone involved.

‘No Way’ features members of our local community as well as choir members from the Climate Calamity Choir, led by Jane Coker and the Melbourne Climate Choir, led by Jeannie Marsh. Both choirs collaborate on environmental actions, drawing together members from different choirs from Gippsland, Melbourne and beyond. They have developed innovative ways of facilitating and recording virtual choirs.

‘Time to See’  focusses on the significance of Western Port as a Ramsar site. Inverloch-based community musicians Lyndal Chambers and Brian ‘Strat’ Strating have added recorder and accordion to the song. Drone footage of Queensferry Jetty and the Bass River taken by Mick Green has also been incorporated into the film.

WESTERN PORT BAY SONG CYCLE
Here are SoundCloud links, descriptions and lyrics of the seven songs in the Western Port Bay Song Cycle.

1 Time to See  Migratory birds enlarge our worlds. They connect us to places across the planet and to those who share our love for them. 2 Flowing On Everything is interconnected. The past flows into the future, carrying the memories and the stories of the living beings who have preceded us. 3 No Way Some things in life are so precious, they are priceless. The AGL’s proposed gas facility in Western Port Bay highlights the question of what we value most. 4 Beautiful Bay Clean water is central to all of life, everywhere. It is the source of life. There is a Slovakian proverb which says, ‘Pure water is the world’s first and foremost medicine’. 5 Taking a Stand As we witness the damage being done to the Earth, we are all diminished. We experience the sense of loss and it is profound. 6 Out on the Bay Life has its own rhythm. The seasons and the cycles of the natural world keep it steady and balanced. 7 Blessings We are in relationship with Country. First Nations people around the world wait for us to listen and learn and so does the Earth.

​

We are sharing these films and songs with the community and with decision-makers as an act of hope and in solidarity with the natural world. In Albert Einstein’s words, it is time to ‘widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.’

We warmly encourage you to take your place in this widening circle of compassion and to raise your voices on behalf of Western Port Bay.

-Laura Brearley. Photographs by Terry Melvin

You can find out more about the Save Western Port Bay campaign at …
https://savewesternport.org/
https://environmentvictoria.org.au/campaign/stop-agls-dirty-gas-plan-for-our-bay/
https://vnpa.org.au/protect-action/save-westernport-bay/

Submissions are going to be reviewed by an Inquiry and Advisory Committee, led by the Victorian Planning Minister Richard Wynne. A directions hearing will be held on September 17, followed by a public hearing starting on October 12 which is likely to run for eight weeks.

 

Oh Me Oh My Oh: Leading Community Music Online

As the tentative optimism emerging for some community music groups in term 3 was crushed by COVID once more, devising a resource to support leaders to facilitate online music making or to squeeze the most out of their current online practice became a priority. Saddened by the clipped wings of songbirds and the frustration of instrumentalists playing alone into the ether almost everywhere, CMVic began working on the development of resources to support an online take off as a way for groups to keep connected.

The result is a fantastic, seven page, website resource called Leading Community Music Online, researched and written by CMVic’s newly appointed tech advisor, Craig Barrie. Together with his partner, Nicki Johnson, Craig has been singing and strumming and keeping the spirits and morale of community music-makers raised up through lockdown since the very start of this corona-induced hullaballoo. Offering multiple online opportunities for people to participate and engage through his work with Nicki as part of All the Way Home, With One Voice Greater Dandenong, and as an independent music teacher, has required Craig to experiment extensively and continually refine what he’s found works best and what is better avoided from both a delivery and engagement perspective, using this format.

Craig has now written up his findings together with some of his top tips into a highly informative, engaging and accessible resource designed to support and enable community music makers’ to enjoy positive tech outcomes and less glitches. It includes advice and help-guides about how to get the best results with limited time and a limited budget.

This is all now loaded and shared on the Community Music Victoria website and we very much hope that the following index of info will help you and your groups to turn iso into calypso and remain tuned in with each other until normal service can be resumed, however far off that is, whether you’re locked down in Melbourne and Mitchell Shire or restricted in regional Victoria. The options discussed have been tried and tested by music leaders in the CMVic family since physical distancing measures took effect in March 2020 – we thank them for so generously sharing their knowledge and experience in the peer-sharing spirit of  Community Music Victoria.

Introduction to Online Leading:
Some of the basics to think about when starting out

Choosing the Right Programs for Online Leading:
A quick overview of the different types of software available (e.g. virtual rooms or project-based apps)

Virtual Rooms for Meeting Up:
A quick run through the main software for ‘virtual rooms’ (e.g. Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc) with key features in brief

Hosting and Running Zoom Sessions:
Lots of details about how to get the most out of Zoom sessions – CMVic’s top choice for virtual rooms

Project-based Apps for Making, Performing and Learning:
A run through the main apps to support ‘asynchronous’ music making that produce multi-player recordings and video grids of remote performers

Storing and Sharing Files:
All these apps produce lots of data. A very brief reminder of where the best places are to store them and share them

Audio and Video: Home Studio on a Budget:
Not sure about your home studio setup? Here are some tips on how to get the most out of what you have, and what you might add to it with a modest budget.

*Members of CMVic can also book a one-to-one tech help appointment with Craig Simply email: craig@cmvic.org.au with your issue specifying when you are available for a call or Zoom chat. Please include a description of relevant hardware (e.g. laptop/tablet/phone, Mac-IoS/PC-Android).

**Keep an eye out for upcoming CMVic Zoom sessions on specific tech related topics. These are advertised in CMVic’s Shout newsletter as well as the CMVic Singing Leaders’ Lounge and Music Group Leaders’ Lounge on Facebook, and include ongoing discussions of what our clever, creative folk are doing to make the best lemonade out of the lemons that 2020 has supplied in abundance!

Written by Deb Carveth with Craig Barrie for Community Music Victoria
July 2020

Featured image: Photo by MILKOVÍ on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Counting Beans ‘n’ Sowing Seeds: A Chat About Funding

The little rows of numbers take up their place across the page of the project spreadsheet. Adopting an orderly fashion, the lines serve the purpose of a groove marked in the soil by a gardener before planting can begin. These rows are the unsung heroes of community music, the basis from which the seeds of community music can grow. They give structure and scaffolding to all CMVic’s projects and programs, forecasting growth, duration and outreach. And while the figures are only the start of the story, it’s all a bit of a chicken and egg situation when it comes to applying for funding.

Over the next page or so, CMVic’s ‘head gardener’ Administration and Finance Coordinator, John Howard, talks about laying the groundwork and shares his tips on the hard graft of applying for project funding, the font of so many wondrous things. Thankfully, John not only sings numbers he can play them and juggle them too, something he really enjoys. As he says, “I kind of don’t get what’s so weird about numbers.”

John not only sings numbers he can play them and juggle them too

Over the course of the past year, John has spent a considerable amount of time researching grants and exploring funding options to sustain and develop some of Community Music Victoria’s current key projects.

One of these projects is Growing Community Music (GCM) which has just reached the end of phase one, a state-wide gathering of information from community music leaders and participants about what they need to support their practice, led by Jane Coker and Lyndal Chambers.

“Growing Community Music (GCM) is what Community Music Victoria is all about as an organisation, it’s what we’re doing“, says John. “We’re growing community music and growing participation. One of the things to emerge from the first phase has been the need for local catalysts, a bit like CMVic had back in the days of big funding from Vic Health, and the opportunity to actually employ people to do that work of mapping what’s there and connecting people up. That’s what we’d like to try and do as part of the next phase of GCM, and I think also having a local steering group in place in each of the regions. To do this would be upwards of around $700, 000 bucks, but any amount can kick it off and get things started.”

Because of the scope and financial requirements of the project, John is looking to secure funding from multiple sources. “If we apply for $90,000 from one funding body, that’s not going to go very far but maybe some of the other applications will come through and that will be fabulous!”

It isn’t easy applying for funding, it’s time consuming and there are invariably knock backs along the way. One rule of thumb is to apply to funding bodies with whom you have a working history who are already familiar with your work. “I think what we’re likely to do is to approach Helen Macpherson Smith Trust because they know us, they know what we’re doing is fabulous and they have a history of supporting what we are doing.” In considering the next phase of GCM, John believes it’s imperative to demonstrate to potential funding bodies the activity and outcomes which’ve been effective and ongoing, since the concept of regional catalysts was originally implemented to support community music making across Victoria.

As the primary funder of Community Music Victoria,  Creative Victoria serves as an advisory body offering support and advocacy about where to go and who to approach for grants pertaining to specific projects, and when to do this. Given that applying for grants is a fairly ongoing pressure, what is it, other than his own passion for community music making, that fires and inspires John to put pen to paper and fingers to keys when he’s faced with a funding deadline?

“Sometimes I feel like it’s such relatively piddling amounts of money that we’re asking for in the grand scheme of things, but what happens to people when they take part in making music is fantastic. We get to see that a lot and I love that and I live for that in some ways, it’s a big thing in my life, making music in various contexts and I just think it’s a wonderful thing for human beings to do, so let’s make it possible for everyone to do, or as many people as we can!”

One of the challenges John finds is expressing this joy in the comparatively formal style of writing required: “It can be hard to express this in the dry fashion within a grant application, you know, the ‘research shows that blah blah blah’ side of things. And different things go to different mobs. Sometimes you have to write a lot, and sometimes you just send in a pro forma about your organisation and what your main priorities for funding are, with a link back to the website.”

John feels that in terms of funding it is good to think both big and small. “I think the small is sometimes more likely and if we can get a bit of a start to allow local groups to be set up and help them apply for money from their local councils, that’s another way to get something happening. The Ian Potter Foundation is a lovely foundation to approach as they only fund upwards of $100k!” Even if you approach an organisation and get knocked back, nothing is ever wasted as they will have become aware of your work and you may be lucky with subsequent applications. It’s about building rapport and it’s important to be recognised as a charity that does bloody good work!”

Before applying for a grant, John suggests it’s well worth making time to establish a rapport with the relevant project officer and tailoring the nature of the content for your audience. Consider the style of language used by the funder. Are they looking for ‘excellence’? Do they refer to practitioners and participants as ‘artists’? Is their focus more ‘high end’ ie, the Ballet or the Opera.  “There’s a lot of good stuff out there to advise you in how to approach a grant writing application. Use plain English, that’s meant to be good. Be direct and clear about what you’re applying for. So much depends on who’s giving the money and what they’re asking for. Our Community is a good place to go for advice and you can find out what grants are available as well as info about courses on how to write good funding applications. It’s generally about reading the guidelines and ascertaining upon what basis they’re going to decide to allocate.”

If you require an incorporated organisation to auspice your grant application, John recommends getting in touch with Auspicious Arts Projects. “They will meet with you at their place next to the Malthouse in South Melbourne, help you with your grant application, and will only take money from you if you actually get your grant – and they will have helped you build in their 5% auspice fee too.  I  can’t recommend them too highly.”

Lastly, don’t worry! As John says, while applying for funding can sometimes feel tenuous in some ways, keep in mind that when the outcome is successful, amazing things happen. Think positive, do your research and as you write visualise all the great things you can achieve with the funds.

Written by Deb Carveth with John Howard for Community Music Victoria

Useful links:

For a full list of current projects from Community Music Victoria, click here.

Auspicious Arts Projects: a not-for-profit creative community management organisation who assists artists and arts organisations

Our Community:  Where not for profits go for help: advice, connections, training and easy-to-use tech tools for people and organisations working to build stronger communities.

Funding Centre:  Where not for profits go for money

Creative Victoria Grants and Support

Regional Arts Victoria Funding Opportunities

FREE Grant Writing Workshop: Melbourne Febraury 24, 2020 hosted by Non Profit Training

Songs & Chants for Planet Earth: A Compilation of Songs by Jane Coker

“The outpouring of freedom songs went to the core of the struggle and expressed, as nothing else was able, the hope, belief, desire, passion, dreams, and anguish of the conflict.” Mary King speaking of the power of song during the US Civil Rights movement.

I put this selection of songs and chants for climate justice together with the specific aim of helping us all to find stuff that was simple and catchy enough to use outdoors at protests. I wrote a few and gathered a few from other people but this is only the beginning of my collection and there’s loads of other great stuff out there. The problem is finding stuff that is really short and easy to learn, yet effective. (Kavisha Mazzella’s Mother Earth song is a perfect example of all these things).

As yet –  to my knowledge – there isn’t a central place where this specific type of song and chant are gathered but the Extinction Rebellion Choir is a good model and has some good resources available on Facebook. Closer to home, Climate Choir Melbourne is also creating a great collection of resources, available here.

People are writing and sharing new songs and chants all the time. Singing together gives us enormous sense of our shared humanity, makes us feel strong and positive, allows us to express our emotions in these desperate times and communicates in a non-threatening way to people observing and participating in  our protests.

Jeannie Marsh, Jane York, Emily Hayes and others have been bringing singing to this week’s Extinction Rebellion protests in Melbourne. I humbly thank them for making this huge contribution to the campaign. Those of us who have the skills to enable people to sing together – now is our moment to make a huge difference to the face of the campaigns and the strength of the movements.  Act now!

For recordings of these songs and chants, click below! Feel free to use any of mine as long as your protest is non-violent.

Sing out Strong!

Jane Coker
jane.coker@bigpond.com
October 2019

*Photo of the Spring Rebellion in Melbourne, courtesy of Hilary Walker

 

 

Stand up for justice with ‘Every Dollar’, a fair trade song.

It takes just over four days for a CEO from the top five companies in the garment sector to earn what an ordinary Bangladeshi woman garment worker earns in her whole lifetime. Source: Oxfam International

When faced with a bargain, it’s tempting to overlook the uncomfortable question of who’s actually picking up the tab if we’re not paying a fair price for what goes into our bag.  Employees at garment factories work six days a week, often for less than USD$1 per hour. Workers are under pressure to meet daily targets and work long days with barely any breaks and their health and safety is not considered a priority by their employers.

In a bid to increase awareness of this exploitation and to address the inherent power we hold as consumers, community singing leaders and musicians, Jessie Vintila, and Emma Royle, wrote a song called ‘Every Dollar’.

The goal of the song is for singers and audience to actually change the way they are shopping, and to be inspired to notice their power and to use that power for good.

In the words of Jessie, “it’s about going ‘wow every time I spend a dollar, I’m communicating something, I’m either communicating, ‘yay’ I want that business to succeed, or I really don’t want that business to succeed… We go along being complicit and supportive of a whole lot of things that, if we stopped to think about, we’d find morally reprehensible.”

Jessie’s community choir, ‘Raise the Roof’ sang Every Dollar at Mullumbimby Music Festival in 2016. Throughout the course of rehearsing and performing the song, many of the singers told Jessie how their experience of learning and singing the words was actually changing the way they shopped and many were switching to fair trade options, where they could.

This is precisely the outcome Jessie and Emma had hoped would happen each time the song is taught, learned, sung and heard. While progress in the bigger picture can feel slow, Every Dollar is a reminder about taking small steps in the right direction and doing what we can as a community to support the liberty and rights of workers in the clothing industry and beyond, whenever we can. The recent announcement by Kmart, Cotton On and Target to ‘strengthen their commitment to a living wage for their clothes makers in response to the Oxfam initiative, ‘What she makes’ is testimony to the effectiveness of this approach. These outcomes are in direct response to action and pressure from shoppers who have had enough of the injustice.

Jessie applauds consumer activism of this nature: “What I love about consumer power is that you don’t have to be fighting; you don’t have to be campaigning, you don’t actually have to be doing anything other than making conscious choices when spending your money. And you know you’re doing something really powerful but it doesn’t give you the burn out feeling that other forms of activism can do over time. It’s completely sustainable at a personal level.”

Jessie and Emma were thorough in their research for the song and the verses about Ranya the seamstress and Abdul the cotton picker from India are both based on real stories and statistics.

Activism runs in Jessie’s blood. She grew up in an environment where accountability and sound ethics were highly valued. “I remember as a child, a friend of my parents’ being all excited about finding a woman down the road in a suburb of Perth who worked in a Vietnamese clothing place and could make t-shirts. At the time I didn’t get why she was so excited about what I thought were these really boring T-shirts!”

Jessie’s now adamant about sourcing fair trade clothing herself and has t shirts for her Raise the Roof choirs and her Sing the Camino* tours made by fair trade manufacturers. This anecdote about T-shirts is a lovely testimony to the outcome of conduct and influence. The repercussions of the choices we make and the effect of the songs we sing ripple out into the world in ways we can never know.  So, in the words penned by Jessie and Emma, lets ‘Stand up for justice, Turn every dollar to good’. (Full song below)

Every Dollar                      Lyrics: Emma Royle & Jessie Vintila
Music from Rarely Herd’s version of Mary Don’t You Weep (Spiritual)

Chorus

Every dollar sends a message
Every dollar plays a hand
For somebody somewhere
Think of the people and the land
Oh, well singin’, if I could
You know that I should, I surely should
Stand up for justice, stand up for justice
Turn every dollar to good

Well Ranya was a seamstress
In a Dhaka factory
Worked fifteen hours seven days of the week
Can’t feed her family

Well Abdul picked the cotton
In the fields of Gujarat
Eight years old, twelve hours a day
Forced out of school to work

Well Wendy clothes her family
From her favourite shops in town
Pays the money never stopping to think
How they keep their prices down

Every dollar sends a message
Every dollar plays a hand
For somebody somewhere
Think of the people and the land
Oh, well singin’, if I could
You know that I should, I surely should
Stand up for justice, stand up for justice
Turn every dollar to good

—

References:
https://whatshemakes.oxfam.org.au/
https://www.vox.com/2018/2/27/17016704/living-wage-clothing-factories
https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it/one-pair-shoes-we-make-valued-more-our-whole-months-salary

By Deb Carveth, online editor for Community Music Victoria, with Jessie Vintila. Thank you, Jessie! 

*You can ‘Sing the Camino’ with Jessie Vintila in Brunswick on Saturday, 23 March: 2-5pm! (Hosted by the Brunswick Rogues Choir). Info and bookings: https://www.singthecamino.com/singing-workshops.html

Weaving homespun tunes into the fabric of daily family life

“… the fish in the river, the clouds in the sky,
the wattles and gum trees that grow up so high
the kookaburra singing so gaily and free
good morning to you and good morning to me…”

                                                 from the Good Morning song* by Woody Clark

Woody Clark dreams of a world where families find time to make music as they go about their lives together. Over the past fifteen years or more, Woody has been working to build a catalogue of songs and resources available to parents and carers to turn this vision into reality and help integrate the rich experience of intergenerational singing and playing into the familial tapestry of homes and lives across Australia.

For Woody, the value is in ‘creating music rather than consuming it’ and, where possible, within a familiar setting involving children, parents or carers, grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins…

“Make music relevant and engaging and something that’s just part of the fabric of the household rather than something external to that, find the means to utilise it in your life in a way that will bring expression and joy, or whatever that might be.”

Woody’s own three kids have collaborated with him on musical projects, co-written songs for his album, and in recent years toured as part of the family band ‘Woody’s World’. This includes his parents, folk singer-songwriters Kate Townsend and Dave Clark. Woody’s World played at many regional festivals and events in 2016, including Adelaide Festival Centre, Melbourne Cabaret Festival and Ukulele Festivals, Pt Fairy Folk Festival and Mt Beauty Music Festival.

Woody remembers feeling surprised by the excitement of former classmates in recalling the novelty of a school teacher who would sing and play guitar to them during art classes. For Woody who grew up in a household where music-making was a normal and assumed part of daily life, this occurrence was familiar and common to him. He realised as an adult, the experience at school had evaporated from his memory as something unremarkable tends to.

Years later as a father and classroom teacher himself, Woody is using his experience and knowledge as a songwriter and musician to uphold the tradition set by his own background, advocating for the benefits and joys of the style of unplugged family music-making he’s enjoyed in his own life.

Woody’s tips for anyone who’s keen to encourage kids to make music are:

• Model the behaviour and expose your kids to live music-making.
• Have a guitar or ukulele sitting on the couch and build music into your day, for example sing a morning song*, or sing a song before you eat your food, or a bedtime song.
• Make it fun! A lot of music education is serious and focuses on the classical side, so if you can show kids that learning and making music can be really fun and engaging too, you’re half way there.

“I’m not putting pressure on my kids to be musicians but if when they leave home, they can play instruments, have some appreciation of the language of music, it’s accessible for them and they can express themselves, then I’ll feel I’ve done my job in that regard.”

As a way to facilitate integrated music-making in the home, Woody runs 8 week ukulele classes teaching kids aged from 5-12 years and their grandparents, parents or guardians, to play the instrument together. In doing so, Woody’s observed the positive benefits and effects that intergenerational learning brings:

“The parents who model the behaviour, doing weekly practise with their kids really upskill in the ukulele, they come back the next week and they’re both excited; they can play that new chord or they can do the new strumming technique. By the end of the 8 weeks instead of the uke being a foreign object that they are wondering how to hold and tune, they are learning to speak that language.”

Next year Woody will take this course online, making it available as a learning resource for kids, parents and carers, everywhere. “It’ll be a kind of crash course in how to learn the basics and there’ll also be an opportunity to play along with Woody’s World during our live shows.” The course will provide footage recorded by Woody for all L-plate ukers to strum along to for practise in their own time. Woody describes it as ‘an integrated project, and a preparatory engagement experience.’

Woody has been working towards this point for a long time having coordinated a number of musical projects, including reKINDle, a response to the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 and he’s dedicated to continuing this momentum around family music making and taking it onwards: “I’ve been developing my ideas around family music participation for well over a decade. I am passionate about music and how it can connect families and communities and through my upbringing and my teaching and my work with my own kids, it feels like all these strands are coming together.”

Article by Deb Carveth, online editor for Community Music Victoria, and Woody Clark.

RESOURCES:

* Woody’s Good morning song is available online! Download the lyrics and mp3 here for freeeee! You can also download the chords and to complete the experience, there’s a colour-in poster to download, print off and complete as you learn the song.

Woody’s debut album is available from his website which includes wonderful family collaborations. Check it out here here. You can keep up to date with his activities on his Facebook Page

Listen and learn ‘Catch the leaves’ a song written by Woody’s daughter when she was 7 years old.

For further information and inspiration, visit Woody’s website: http://www.woodysworld.com.au/

Carbon Canaries sing out for climate change

If the ongoing issues surrounding climate change and the proposed Adani Coal mine leave you wanting to blow your top we’ve unearthed a way to help channel that frustration and anger into inspiration and joy. Let us begin. Pop a coin into your cerebral jukebox and select the tune to the chorus of the Abba song Fernando substituting the words penned by Bjorn, Agnetha and co with the following:

There’s more carbon in the air each night 
We’ve got to fight Adani
Causing climate change for you and me
It’s planet’ry Adani
And we know that we must never lose
The stage is set
We’ll occupy your office suite
Until you’re beat Adani…

Great isn’t it? Spirits depressed and deflated by overwhelming environmental concerns are momentarily lifted and buoyed with the added bonus that the familiar tune makes it an easy song to pick up and join in with in no time: empower yourself and others by engaging in a spot of choral activism and sing out against climate change. And there’s plenty more material where that came from, including for traditional folkies ‘Stop Adani Stop the mine’ to the tune of Oh my darling Clementine, guaranteed to stick firmly in ears everywhere:

Stop Adani, Stop Adani, Stop Adaaaani, Stop the mine
Shouldn’t aughta poison water
It’s an order – Stop the Mine

Clever and simple, these songs are addictive and accessible and are the work of two radically minded musician/activists from Queensland and NSW, Jenny Fitzgibbon and Paul Spencer, who have together created Carbon Canaries, an online song resource ‘enabling people everywhere to sing out for climate action with songs that ‘poke fun at fossils & fuelish humans, celebrate renewables of all genders and make choirs spring up at an action or staffroom near you.’

To date, Carbon Canaries have parodied and posted the tunes of 35 well-known songs re-writing the lyrics to reflect, as Paul writes, ‘the human experience of the social change movement and of living in a world that’s so beautiful, so alarming and so inspiring all at the same time.’

Jenny is motivated by the desire to offer protesters and climate campaigners a source of ‘joy and energy’ and to enable people everywhere.

The Carbon Canaries’ website provides all the tools group facilitators could wish for to get singing for positive change. Song sheets and tunes are available to download as well as backing tracks and videos of Carbon Canaries’ songs and climate inspired parodies of songs by other activists, such as the superb Specials-inspired ‘A Message to you Turnbull‘ by Melbourne’s Glorious Rabble led by Stephen Taberner and accompanied by the Horns of Justice, (below).  In the spirit of solidarity, Carbon Canaries resources don’t cost the earth, in fact they are all available absolutely free, although visitors to the site are invited to support their great work by donation.

Source: singing out for climate action

Tune in to the next CMVic blog post to read how the Carbon Canaries’ work is being used in Victoria by the Melbourne based Climate Choir in their singing for social change.

Article by Deb Carveth, online editor for Community Music Victoria