Oxford Concert Party News
JustTextGiving by Vodaphone
As we are funded solely by donations from trusts and individuals, we are always looking for new ways to raise money, and to make giving even easier.
We are now using JustTextGiving by Vodaphone, a brand new, free service for charities, that has no set up or fundraising costs for charities, no network charges for people making donations and every penny donated goes to charity. Gift Aid can also be added to donations.
From now on, you can support Oxford Concert Party and make donations of up to £10 by texting OCPA20 and either 2, 5 or 10 to 70070 to make your donation. The text message is free and all of the donation will be passed to Oxford Concert Party.
Fundraising Concert
We will be celebrating our 20th Anniversary with a concert on 13 April at the Holywell Room. The Holywell Room was the venue of our first concert in April 1992 and we have played there on many occasions since.
Tickets are on sale from Tickets Oxford. More information can be found on our Diary page.
AgeUK Bucks Food for Thought
We are very busy at the moment, about a quarter of the way through our latest Food for Thought project.
Between October and March, we will be working with 6 centres throughout Bucks and we have begun work with 3 of them. We are currently working with 3 artists: Helen Jacobs, Claire Christie Sadler and Pat Winslow.
Helen Jacobs works in textiles and also iron sculpture. Her pieces are often made to play and interact with. http://www.helen-jacobs.com/
Claire Christie Sadler is a drawing and paper artist who is also a musician and who sees a very strong connection between music and art. http://www.clairecsadler.co.uk/
Pat Winslow is a poet and fiction writer who is currently working at a writer in residence at a prison. http://www.patwinslow.co.uk/poetryandfiction/index.html
All three have an active commitment to facilitating creativity in others, which fits in perfectly with the ethos of OCP. They have been combining their skills with those of Arne and Isabel to create excellent sessions which have been full of laughter.
Annual Report
We have put together an annual report which you can download from our resources page or by clicking the image to the left. It is a quick look at some of our work last year with images. We hope you enjoy reading it.
Forthcoming Projects
We are currently planning a few exciting projects for 2012. As soon as we have more details, we will let you know!
The Oxford Concert Party Went Live!
We have the most wonderful time at our concert on Tuesday 18th October in St Michael & All Angels, Summertown, Oxford. The venue was perfect, a really beautiful and inviting space with tremendous acoustics. Our audience was warm, supportive and entered into the spirit of the evening with great gusto!
We were delighted to get a great review from The Oxford Times.
We played a lot of new music, including premieres of original compositions by Artistic Director, ARne Richards and the event was recorded for our next CD which will be launched in 2012 to celebrate our 20th Anniversary.
Ageing Artfully Conference
We were delighted to take part in the Ageing Artfully Conference in Manchester in October, an event hosted by The Baring Foundation and Manchester City Council's Valuing Older People.
The day was an opportunity for professional exchange and learning between artists young and old, those who commission arts with or on behalf of older people, those who fund or study this field of work, ageing sector professionals and arts organisations. It was exciting to exchange ideas with other groups and individuals who believe in the power of arts in promoting the health and well being of older people. There were some excellent sessions with speakers from right across the sectors and it was brilliant to see how much work is being done and, most importantly, how it is all enabling older people to take control of their own activities.
AGEUK Oxfordshire - Day Care Training Programme
Between June and October 2011, with a grant from The Barings Foundation, OCP delivered a highly successful training programme for day centre staff in Oxfordshire. The project consisted of 12 participatory music sessions divided between 2 centres, led by ARne Richards and Isabel Knowland, with clients at the individual centres. Staff and volunteers from other centres observed two music sessions each and these sessions were were preceded with a preparatory briefing with ARne and Isabel where they were asked to observe 3 particular aspects of OCP's delivery. Immediately after the session, they met with ARne and Isabel to reflect on their observations and discussed how to apply some of the ideas and techniques in their own centres. At the end of the project, all the staff and volunteers came together for a final training session to go through everything they had seen and learned.
ARne and Isabel ran follow up supervision sessions at three of the centres. At these, the volunteers ran the workshops alongside Arne and Isabel. These were extremely satisfying as they used the tools they had learnt and threw themselves into the sessions with gusto. We were really impressed with what the volunteers took on board from the project - in two centres, the volunteers ran the follow-up sessions entirely with ARne and Isabel as observers and had obviously give the sessions a great thought and preparation.
Feedback after the project included:
Everyone thought the project was better than they had expected
Everyone thought the musicians' approach and rapport with older people was excellent
The key benefits of the workshops for the clients included:
- To feel included as a group and a chance to reminisce about their life and also to feel valued
- Being able to "perform" in a safe group eg solo singing and poetry recital
- Good simple ideas which would involve everyone whether they were musical or not.
- Gave a sense of inclusion, raised confidence levels in shyer members.
- Gave great enjoyment through the music and being able to handle and use the instruments
Benefits for Staff / volunteers:
- Stimulating ideas, new ways of looking at group activity, especially using music and words / poetry
- All staff could be involved as everyone has likes and dislikes of music and memories to share
- Opened up a whole new area for me, how to use our new musical instruments
- Everyone within the centre had a wonderful upbeat feel after the session finished.
Other feedback included:
- It was quite a revelation to hear stories from clients regarding where they were during the war years, etc. Also very interesting to hear stories from others who normally would not divulge things or difficult to get things out of them.
- It was interesting to have the workshop led by experienced professional musicians who shared their knowledge and experience through anecdote as well as by straightforward reading. It made it more memorable as well as more fun.
- A lady who had a dislike to music was by the end of the session joining in. And a gentleman sang a solo and loved playing the drum.
- As it wasn't our own centre, I can only say that my own observations revealed that several visually impaired and hearing impaired members were treated with great respect and patience, and as a result were able to participate fully in the session. I was very impressed at the high standard of knowledge that you imparted.