Waiting For The Bus To Open Its Doors When The Roads Were Shut Off In Brixton The Other Night Too...

‘Emergency” lesson plan, which included making a collage of places where people work... This was three classes work put together :) Topic was ‘jobs’.. we also played bingo, memory and charades... Native English Speaker in a Vienna Primary School...

Couldn't resist but return for a quick visit to the AMNH to look at the dinosaurs and other early reptiles...

Victoria Park - to accompany my previous text!

A few years old but very interesting article about the time when there were four cinemas in Crystal Palace. At the moment the long ongoing campaign to bring back just one cinema continues with a dedicated team - Found on Twitter as: @picturepalace … They also posted this article on Facebook as ('Picture Palace Campaign') … Another worthy heritage cause that would have a present and future impact!

Post- lecture thoughts

So a few thoughts that I had during my course session today: Should I in theory involve participants in my trail, in the trying out other audio trails? I don't think that it is feasible with my time scale, but a good thought in terms of creating a community project. Involve the community with decisions about how they want to create theirs. I feel mine is going to be driven by me in the main.

Something that was said today by our visiting lecturer kind of linked with my thoughts. She said that in terms of her education setting that it is about connecting the past to the present and it is not jut about knowledge transfer. I like that thought.

I was also wondering about referencing the visitor research that Kew Gardens did for their app - that was published in their paper entitled 'Delightfully Lost' - there may be some elements that are relevant to creating my trail - when thinking about what people like to do in an outdoor natural space - and the thought of wanting to be delightfully lost seems to fit with some of my reading on psychogeography.... still only in the initial stages and my introduction to it book!

Learnt all I know about how to have great learning interactions in museums. (My montessori training coming in handy too!) Can't recommend highly enough.

#norwood #funpalaces #jameswilsoncoffeeshop

Using #MoMA mobile guide on phone. Great that you can get free audio guide - easy to navigate & runs smoothly - couple of feedback things though - would be good if 'back' button just went back to previous page rather than home page as need to scroll through again to art works and some kind of map navigation tool/map on it would be great....

Bus travel observations and thoughts ... This time I contemplated the landscape of the transmitter in cp being the familiar feature of the return to cp from town... It's a geographical landmark now. I am also reminded of the posters advertising the fresh air of cp at it's similarly geographical landmark heights! (I wonder if the humps were there in the Victorian times...)

Bonfire Night Session Plan

November 2016

Hello again,

I have been doing plenty of writing to describe the music sessions that I lead in L'Arche and so I thought it might be useful if I share the format that I use for them.

The sessions usually last about two hours with a twenty minute- half an hour tea break in the middle.

I am going to share the Bonfire Night session plan....

To continue from my previous blog entries... the session before the bonfire night one was about the rural work turning more to the towns and cities with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Elements included watching the Pandemonium section of the London Olympic Opening Ceremony. We beat on large metal and plastic flower pots and used glass nuggets to represent money in a noisy way....

I write the plan beforehand but then add any adaption I make (hence different tenses) - and there are often plenty of on the spot ideas!

As always I have many thanks to give to my fellow colleagues for taking part in the session.

Where you see the * and ** and *** you can see the ideas I learned from Emmie Ward. In particular her use of the Big Mack as a musical instrument and for recording voice. Emmie also has great techniques for the inclusion of people's vocalisations and interests into songs.  I also learned the songs for this session from Emmie. I'll ask Emmie to share more about that at some point as she has lots of great techniques :)

Bonfire Night  3

rd

November 2016

Attention Grabber Activity: Firework App on IpadFirstly just me taking it around before the hello song... everyone else got a turn in the soundscape

Soundscape: Bonfire Night Ssss of a Fizzy drink being opened, crackling of popping candy with water, firework app on ipad, sliding whistle, (rain maker (firework falling sound), crackling paper, bang of the drum (we said 1, 2, 3, bang - everyone has the opportunity to hit drum on the word bang) peoples vocal sounds on Big Mack to play (integrate their interests) *

Activity: ‘We’re all walking along to the fire’  song – action: we poured salt through a flower pot into a small washing up bowl and said it was gunpowder for the gunpowder plot and listened to how it made a quiet sound and we needed to be quiet… can say shhh –

Activity (Contd.): I then said let’s listen to find out if the plan worked! – I asked: Will there be the sound of Big Ben chiming or the sound of an explosion? We counted down and then… heard... yes big ben chiming (iPad) so the plot failedName activity: (soundabout) beat X 4 then name three times and move on. (we did one name and then another) This sort of connected as if naming the names of the conspirators pouring gun powder. (could link this more to the plot or being part of something in future) **

Rhyme: Remember, remember, poem call and response (I actually did this later in storytelling)

Rhythm: Boom Whackers – continue ‘hit, rest, rest, rest’ activity, with everyone having a chance to play them. We stamp feel throughout to keep a beat and i renew the rhythm in-between every person, but anyone can play any pattern they like as it all fits... I play it on the low red one, but again anyone can do anything... The stamping and me doing it in-between seems to help people to create a connecting rhythm.

Vocal Warm Up:Included Do re mi.

Songs:

London’s Burning

Ring of Fire (after singing through we repeated burn burn bit and people took turns to move the fire poi) ***

Great Balls of Fire (added peoples own endings to ‘Goodness Gracious) ***