Morag's Blog - September 2023
01 Sep 2023

Initial conversations about the project have been 99.9% positive and engaged. In fact, so far only one person has been anti. However, what has emerged is that I have to think more about “living in England” than “being English” as this excludes a lot of people who live here with constructive views and ideas to contribute. 

There had been a thought that we could record people actually singing the songs but a trial run proved this to be unrealistic as the field recordings were too poor to be used, people didn’t know the words, could’nt (or wouldn’t) sing or were completely alienated by the idea and withdrew interest. So instead, we are asking for the name of a song and the performer, with a reason to explain their choice. However we did locate a couple of potential performers who might sing publically later given a bit of support.

Collection Points

• Aldi said “no”.  Shame – apparently they have no room in the car park for a community led project and it might set a precedent. Heaven forfend. . 
• RNLI.  Del– cautiously positive for us to stand outside
• International Food Centre café- very keen, will free us up a table. 
• Dalby Café -Mark – positively enthusiastic!- will make sure we have a table 
• Grain Grocer –Katie –very positive, suggests the seat outside + catch passers-by
• Camp – very keen – need to find an evening without loud live music!
• Cliffs – initially very positive but has changed hands and difficult to pin down
• 2 local care homes to be visited by music therapists who have worked there. 

Possible: Tap Room? Harbour Arm?

Thomas Wood from Snottledogs has set up a very impressive method of collecting data using an app which can be downloaded onto an i-Pad  

So all my bits of paper are out of the window!

If I ask someone to think of a song that sums up life in England people go blank. It’s too much of a contextless demand. I decide to open with a discussion about the concepts used to teach Good Citizenship in English schools. Maybe if people get their minds around whether they agree with them it may spark a memory of a song.

• honesty
• compassion
• respect
• responsibility
• courage
• respect for law
• welcoming

I haven’t use the term “tolerance” , which is in the curriculum list because I’m not sure what it says about a person-  if  someone merely “tolerates“ me I’m not that happy about it.