On the third term of our first year, which is about Socialy Engaged Art. Natasha, Tal and me, got selected to be part of a production of a 3 session project in St Mungo's with Rhia Parker (Musician) and Laila (Writer). I was excited as I never had done something like that before, and always wanted to get the experience on this field producing work with people that has special needs.
St Mungo's
Project
We got together a week before the sessions to brainstorm, plan what we would be doing, and to ask questions, such as, how to facilitate the session, "Be prepared to use yours skills of active listening quite a lot" Rhia. Each of us talked about what we do, and what we are interested at the moment. What is home? What are your curiosities? By doing that helped to find a mutual interest between us. And "London" came out of that quite a lot of that conversation. So we decided to explore more about London, and what we would be talking about with the participants about it and creating...
"Would we be making a music? Writing a poem? Both? How about if one of them doesn't want to do it? - Just tell the participant that it's okay to be there just watching the others making".
- On our first session..
What was interesting from this session was to see how Rhia led it. It was like a conversation rather than teaching. We had a plan with some structure, but it was quite open so we could explore different things and come back to our plan.
On this session we began just with one participant, Brandon, which was learning how to play guitar, pretty cool guy, and relax, then towards the end the session we got another participant, she was really energetic and colorful.
We were expecting around 8 participants, however, we were aware that it can be quite tricky to know if all of them will come or not to the sessions, it's unpredictable.
Brandon interests were in music and he was really open to work and share his ideas. I guess Rhia set the space with the conversational way, with no pressure. We started to talk about London and brainstorming it. So at the end of the session we were already with this idea of L - O - N - D - O - N, as a structure for the song.
- Second Session...
Brandon brought almost a whole song, which is amazing to see he putting all that effort for the session, however we had a new person in the group that day, a writer. When we got into small groups, the writer was worried if he should have an input in the Brandon's song that was already almost done. Rhia said that it can happen, and it can be a bit tricky to manage the space in this environment for new ideas if someone brought a strong idea or project to work on. She said that everything worked out as we didn't have many participants. I guess to avoid uncomfortable situations to happen, having a plan and being aware of what can go wrong, you will be able to see the problem coming from far away, and guide the session to a different path. Instead of being caught in that moment thinking what to do. It is important to make sure with the group what we are doing, by making everyone comfortable to have an input.
When the writer performed his poem with the song, he saw that it was okay to do it. I also was writing a rap to be part of the song..
- Third Session...
We got more participants each session, people would get more interested in what we were doing in St Mungos, and would joining in the session.
On this day, Brandon brought a copy of the song to each one of us, that he had been developing on his on time.
We spent our last session developing and organizing the structure of the song to fit everyone in, writers and spoken word artists that were in the session as well.
We know we would be performing it at the end to a couple of people that would come see us. Through my experience when a group has to perform at the end of the session, it makes everyone focused and working together to create. At the end, turned out to be around 20 people watching us.
There are so much to take from this sessions, from the contact with st mungos to make new projects in the future, to the way to work and lead in an environment like that, having structure, and being aware of what can go wrong, however still being open with many options to include everyone, having a conversation instead of teaching.
This is the final product..