Over the last couple of months, the Make Music Day UK team have been up and down the UK – courtesy of Zoom, of course – delivering meet-up events with partners in different locations. These events provide a space for people to come together, chat about their own involvement in music, meet over musicians and creative folk, and start to think about how they can celebrate their love of music on the 21 June 2021… whatever the world looks like by then!
We started our virtual tour before Christmas in Scotland, and were joined by the fabulous Tinderbox Collective who co-hosted with us. They shared with the audience the Hey Jude – Symphony of a Thousand project that they delivered with MEPG as part of Make Music Day 2020, talking people through how they’d used digital technology to bring people together to play music together despite the pandemic. This sparked people’s imaginations about what they could potentially do this year and ideas ranged from projecting live performances onto the outside of buildings to composing specific pieces of music to be released on the 21 June.
Since the New Year we’ve upped the ante a bit and have delivered meet-ups in Northern Ireland, the South East and London. Our friends at Beyond Skin co-hosted the Northern Ireland event and shared their learning of working online across geographies to co-produce music. In the South East, we were joined by both Make Music Abingdon and Norfolk Libraries who talk about live streaming, song-swap challenges and the importance of letting people know that Make Music Day tends to get LOUD if you’re delivering your event in a shared building – thanks Norfolk Libraries for that little gem of a ‘lessoned learned’. In London, Team London Bridge and Musicity helped us to deliver a fab meet-up that looked at issues and the practicalities of performing in public, as well celebrating some of the events that they had delivered for previous Make Music Days – from parades through to the programming of online video premieres.
Attendees of these events included music teachers, samba bands, youth workers, musicians, people who work in arts and cultural organisations, members of orchestras, community volunteers and many more – showing that Make Music Day really is for everyone. Initial ideas from these sessions included hybrid events (e.g. small-scale offline performances that are also live streamed), doorstep performances, window serenades and bandstand gigs, song challenges and open rehearsal sessions. There really are loads of ways you can get involved on the 21 June 2021… come rain, or shine.
If you’d like to find out more about how you can get involved, why don’t you hop along to one of our online meet-ups or attend a how-to workshop? Full listings of our events, trainings and other offers can be found on our Meet-Ups and Workshops page.
Hope to see you there!
