TradTalk conference, Dundee, March 2011 Community & Creativity – Riverside Music Project in Stirling Jo Miller
RMP is an intergenerational traditional music project with up to 35 regular participants in fortnightly family sessions. We also run ceilidhs and other events. Riverside Ceilidh Band has evolved from the project, also a young people’s band. Led by Jo Miller but participants encouraged to share music leading. Family sessions provide environment for learning, listening, performing (together and individually), arranging, dancing and socialising. Our aim is to offer not a ‘top down’ model of learning, but rather ‘centre out’, using the skills and resources of those who take part to support learning by all. JM’s role is less that of formal tutor than mentor, empowering learners and sustainable music making. Some input is directive, some less so. Mixture of non-formal (led but outside formal education) and informal (self directed) learning. In the latter, learners choose own direction of learning, alone or with others, and skills and knowledge are assimilated in haphazard ways. There is a deep integration of listening, performing, improvising and composing throughout the process. RMP aims to encourage learners to be more self sufficient. Recent music psychology research in Netherlands suggests that simple act of listening develops musical ability in brain; sufficient exposure – not necessarily formal training - is all that’s needed to create competency in musical genre with which subjects are familiar. In other words, we need to become EXPERIENCED LISTENERS. Folklorist Henry Glassie, writing about ceilidh culture in Ireland, quotes one of his interviewees; “Like so many great musicians, I learned less from teaching than from listening”. The starting point for us at RMP is making music together. From that, instrumental needs and individual needs are addressed, also music leader skills and non-musical skills such as organising events nurtured. This kind of project appears to be sustainable because it uses the people and resources to hand; we start where we are and make links with others doing likewise. Minimal ££ is required, and being relatively small allows us to have a flexible format. Every class becomes an event.
Further information at http://www.spanglefish.com/riversidemusicproject
or contact jomiller62@gmail.com