Can charities spare a thought or even a dime?

 

 

 Here is the link to Yorkshire Evening Post who printed my letter on that perennial Musicians' problem: Work Not Play.

 

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/letters/yep-letters-may-15-1-6619324

 

And here is the full text:

 

Spare a dime?

I’d like our charities to spare a thought or even a dime, for our local musicians.

On a regular basis my [steel]bands and I asked to play for charity events – races, summer fairs usually. And I like to play them if we can and if we can afford it, because I understand the power of live music. We like playing good cause gigs. But there is always that awkward moment when I bring up the question of budget, expenses, not even pay; donations, refreshments.

We get- it’s for charity, and, of course, if that was a one-off that would be okay. And there are some close-to-home events, eg Unity Day when I do volunteer to play, and payment is not a consideration.

For races the organisers have to get security barriers, marshalls, water; the risk assessments and general admin must be phenomenal. Do they all work for nothing, because they work for a charity. Do the ice-cream van give away ices? Is it only musicians?

All bands spend years learning their craft, saving up for and buying instruments, paying for lessons, then paying to tune and upgrade, buy insurance, maybe save up for a van, hire rehearsal space, get baby-minders. And in the run-up to all events leaders spent their time ensuring we have enough players, enough transport, a van, know all the new tunes . . . And the bigger the band the harder that is to organise!

Good musicians generally are trying to earn a living, so are charities expecting only to use amateurs, or are they asking professionals to work for free?  A band brings occasion to an occasion. We create an atmosphere, drive the runners on, bring in the passers-by from the streets outside. We choose and change the repertoire to suit and encourage the runners, or the toddlers skipping round the cake stalls, or do requests for Memory Lane. Are we just a nice extra or integral to an event? [Two years we met runners afterwards from a Leeds town centre race who said that hearing us as they turned off Briggate and up Albion Place gave them the strength to keep going.]

Organisers sometimes suggest that playing their event will give you publicity, but we have played the endless sides of endless roads only to find, in the local press, we rarely get name-checked or our pics shown.

Curiously it’s often the smaller organisations who make the effort to offer donations i.e those playing with less money. One such group [actually not so small] that I would single out for praise is Otley Carnival. The year that they couldn’t afford the previous year’s fee, they wrote and asked us if we could play for less. They always give us pride of place on a huge float, and always name-check in the local paper. Here we are treated with such respect; it is an honour to play for Otley.

 

 

A few years ago I tried to have this conversation with a big cancer charity’s event. On this occasion I did agree to play for nothing.  Later they wrote and thanked us, said they had made over £8,000. Taking into account our costs on the day, as well as the years of study, we ended up paying to play. We felt deflated and used. As a music teacher [obviously my main source of income] I encourage my students to consider music after school both as a hobby and a career. I would think that the pleasure and value that local musicians bring to local events is worth paying for.

 

Victoria Jaquiss FRSA

Bandleader, music teacher

 

City of Leeds School takes a stand on EAL, then gives the school away

This is my letter in the Yorkshire Evening Post April 2014 re the latest sad school-giveaway, and below is the text of letter

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/letters/yep-letters-april-24-1-6577189

playground at City of Leeds School

I support City of Leeds School's brave stand in in declaring so publicly that its students need extra lessons in English as an Additional Language. Head teacher, Georgie Sale points out correctly that even four years in the UK is not long enough to have acquired enough academic English to get the exam grades that reflect any child's natural ability.

However, as a previous long-serving and ultimately ousted governor, I know that this is a long held view; that attention has always been given to EAL, and that, despite our children not getting the grades that would keep Balls and now Gove off our backs, we went on passing inspections, with the EAL dept always getting an honourable mention in the dispatches.

Two years ago we gained School of Sanctuary status - first UK high school to do so. What an honour! And how would anyone like to be remembered as the teacher, the support assistant, the school that supported you in your darkest hours as well as your best, or the robot following orders in the exam factory?

Sadly, I see that the IEB (interim executive board) has applied for academy status. This will not, in any way, improve the overall average grades. The school will continue to languish quite unfairly in the eyes of the government, the media and the local public. Worse, all the emphasis on EAL will inevitably be directed to improving average grades; and inevitably away from offering the individual children the sanctuary and personal support that any school should be offering as well.

However, until we a government that has an education secretary who genuinely gets Blunkett's old slogan that Every Child Matters, children will be forced down inappropriate routes that only serve in the pointless competition that is one country's educational system against another.

And we won't get this government unless we as citizens stand up for ourselves and we as teachers, stand up for our charges.

Victoria Jaquiss FRSA [teacher, writer, ex-governor, local resident]

City of Leeds Public Consultation not quite Public Enough

When is a public consultation not a public consultation? Answer, when the public don't know about it. 

This is best done by private academy consultation company, Artelia, who used similar methods at Heath Hayes Primary School, in Staffordshire, as they are trying it on at City of Leeds School.

The only piece of advertising for this public consultation in public was in the North Leeds News, a local newspaper with intentionally a small circulation. Sadly, the date given of the public meeting was inaccurate, so the very few who were readers weren't given a chance to attend. 

City of Leeds School has, for decades, attracted its students from all round Leeds, in particular, but by no means exclusively, from those areas at the other end of the No 1 bus route: Beeston and Holbeck, and also, Harehills, Chapeltown and East End Park. Were their local papers not considered worth contacting?

At the school Reception there was a little display of the academy proposal fliers, but this is a high school. Students are either dropped off in cars or make their own way.

The only  parents waiting in reception tend to be the Polish speaking, Polish reading parents, waiting to enrol their children (yes increase the numbers on roll, and in all different school years). Not only Polish, of course, but you get the point -  new parents, whose interest in and understanding of the intricacies of UK education system will necessarily be restricted to - can my children come here?

In my opinion, if, as it said on the natty little green and white document, our "views are important to us", if this true, and if you have the money to employ this private firm, with its Sevenoaks' office address, then you have money to take an advert out in the Yorkshire Evening Post. Or even do a press release to the local tv and radio stations, as well as the local papers.

If you do get hold of the document, the middle section is turquoise green, most writing in black, fairly hard to read. At least the important contact details were on a different colour! Sadly that colour is red. Now that is unreadable. As are the words: Consultation ends at 9a.m. On 30th January 2014. 9 a.m!

At the most recent Anti-Acadmies Alliance AGM, we found out that Artelia used the same tactics at Heath Hayes - lack of proper publicity, same hard to read colour scheme etc. All a bit shabby, all a bit can't really be bothered. 

This fight is for City of Leeds to lose. And, if Artelia loses it, well, there's plenty more schools in deprived areas, and the more traumatised immigrants [I'm simplifying here!] they get, the worse the academic results, and hey presto - it's the school that under-performing! And, all the good teachers must have left! 

Three years ago, City of Leeds School became the first UK School of Sanctuary. No mention of this anymore; and the sign outside the gates, long since taken down.

Leeds to be Cultural Capital?

Thanks to Yorkshire Evening Post for printing my letter [20 December 2013]:

I see that Leeds is planning to to bid to be cultural capital (YEP 5 Dec). I am looking at the things that Leeds has been losing, and I am wondering exactly what it still has to offer.

The article mentions the West Indian Carnival, Henry Moore Institute and Opera North HQ. but this town, my adopted home town, seems to be a sorry state. For a start, the skyline from the motorway is a guastly mash-up of toy town designs, including the infamous Bridgewater. Beautiful Victorian buildings, like Royal Park are demolished; hideous PFI schools proliferate; Leeds has become a centre of shopping centres.



East Steel at YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic Town Hall Concert

But I would most certainly support this bid, with a few provisos: that the culture should include us all. For a start I would give the orchestras, choruses and special needs music charities their homes back, either at the West Park Centre, or on its present site, or somewhere equally suitable. The YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic Christmas Concert, playing its 30th concert last week at the Town Hall, is certainly a cultural asset to be celebrated.

For a second I would examine Leeds West Indian Carnival a bit more closely. The only live band in the procession is its own steel band. No other live acts - samba bands, djembes, or marching  bands from any other cultures get a look in, and my own steelbands (Foxwood, Sparrows etc) were banned three years ago, on the grounds that a live band might provoke a riot! Leeds Silver Sparrows played London Southbank two years ago to celebrate the Festival of Britain. Foxwood wowed Wonderland this weekend on Briggate. Alas they were not considered worthy to pay their own home town carnival!

Foxwood Steel at Leeds Waterfront Festival 2013

In other cities, Liverpool and Cardiff for example, they have reconsidered what Carnival means to their cities, and reinvented them, bringing in acts from more recent immigrants to reflect their cultural diversity. Huddersfield, for example has renamed its carnival "Huddersfield Carnival" and is setting about becoming more inclusive, without losing its West Indian roots. 

So, by all means apply to be the centre of culture, but first let's have a good inwards look at ourselves.


Sparrows play Festival of Britain at London Southbank July 2011

Victoria Jaquiss FRSA

Hyde Park Leeds

Meanwhile back in Hyde Park, there has been a murder this weekend in Brudenell Road. Connected with some party in Ash Grove that was still going on at 8.30 am. Well, for a start, who on earth thinks it's a good idea to party while the rest of get the sleep we need for the day ahead. The students who come to live in Hyde Park because they think it's partyland need to realise that, besides the anti-social element to their activities, they put themselves at risk - from all types of predators.

This is a very sad event that tarnishes our community, and will put parents off letting their student-children from living here. Landlords, beware of how you sell this area, or you, too will be the losers.

West Park Centre, one year later

This proposed demolition of West Park Centre and the continued homelessness of Leeds top amateur orchestras and chorus, and Special Needs music charities, if nothing else, could damage Leeds and Leeds Council's reputation as a thriving city. After all it's not just about commerce and shopping.

They have exaggerated the state of the building out of all proportion, and it remains the best sized and best placed building with the most facilities.









That it is the only arts centre of its kind in Leeds, and being inclusive [from top quality players to cutting edge special needs music education] makes the hostility of the powers-that-be
baffling. 

We have put in our complaint to the Ombudsman, and are daily expecting their judgment. However, it took the Council less time to condemn the building, than the Ombudsman has taken to respond. Looks like the latter has put some thought into it, whereas . . . Well, we hope that it's worth the wait.

Or perhaps it is all about the shopping. 

 

The Strangeness of Scrutiny

Well, Diane and I [in our capacity as YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic committee members] went to the first Scrutiny meeting in August, and then a month later Lorraine [Musical Ark] and I attended the next one. We represented both our own charities and the orchestras and choruses etc.

Besides being teachers of music for children and adults with Additional [Special] Needs, the three of us are also academics [as in, we write books and articles, and I seem to write an awful lot of letters and blogs these days.]  and it was frustrating not to be able to counter some of the council officers' and the councillors' arguments.

What was strange was that we could give our five minutes' worth of speech, then we had to listen to councillors, and sometimes council officers debating the issues without giving us a chance to correct the incorrectness of some of the assumptions. We were thus, junior partners in the debate, yet as West Park users of sixteen years, we knew rather more about some parts of the situation than anyone else round the table.

On 17 September 2013, ten months after we were evicted from our home of many years, I thought that Scrutiny was going to examine the correctness of the procedures that led to our homelessness, and how we were rehoused, or not, in the ensuing months. But no, we were filibustered and sidetracked into a childish and facile account, certainly not a debate, of the value of the various health and safety reports, concluding that it was almost certain that someone would have been electrocuted had the centre not been closed when it was, and even that maybe it should have been closed sooner.

[Now, as a Russian graduate and sometime reader of Gogol, I had met this stuff in a previous life, and was rather surprised to be taking part in this little charade a century or so later.]

The word, "repairs" didn't feature at all in this debate.

There was hardly any time to consider what happened to the ex-users, because we treated to this rambling story of health and safety reports, with a total lack of academic rigour, and sometimes scant regard for the truth. [eg, someone, I can't recall whom, told the meeting that YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic had rejected the offer of storage space at the warehouse at Domestic Street, preferring to store instruments in their own houses. Actually, YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic did store equipment at this depot, but not being given our key for it till June 2013, and it being next to the Armley Gyratory it was/it is not an easy place to use. Anything being used on a regular basis did have to live in volunteers' homes. And I have to say that the novelty does wear off.

The worst thing about the marimbas is that you can't stack anything on top of them; whereas steelpans can be quite neatly set up behind the sofa.