Image: Musician David McFarlane
So it’s ‘Team David and Jen.’
David is a musician with lots of experience of running workshops in person, often involving songwriting and music tech. On Zoom, the song part is a bit tricky – if you’ve ever tried singing along with someone over Zoom, you’ll know what we mean – but we’re getting round that with some clever Zoom tricks. We’ve got together some great ways of making music and writing songs online, and we’ve already heard some brilliant music from groups we’ve worked with.
As a freelance drama practitioner, I work with a range of people – mostly in primary schools, SEN settings and care homes. I love collecting stories from people and seeing where we can collectively take those. I love using music and song in my work, so getting to work with David, Paul and Andy is joyous! I have made some adaptations to drama games and exercises to work well on Zoom.
So far, we have led a training session for activity coordinators in care home or community settings. We did lots of accessible drama and music exercises to get them confident to use the Armchair Adventures pack. The group were happy being creative and trying new things. We used drama, music, spoken word and movement to explore our theme of Superheroes based on one of the podcasts.
Feedback included – “That’s the first time anyone’s got me to participate in drama exercises for a long time! Well done.” and “Thanks, really interesting. Looking forward to giving all a go.”
We have led three workshops in schools both mainstream and SEN– using Lynda’s Superhero and Carla’s Bubble adventures as our starting point.
We have met Superheroes like ‘fire girl’ and ‘invisible boy’ who have superpowers which include mind control, dedication, being very kind and laser eyes, feet and hands! We have popped a lot of bubbles and floated up to the sky in ginormous bubbles too.
So, we hope to meet you soon. Go on – just say ‘Yes’ – you know you want to!