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• The Sound Circles
documentary links excerpts from several workshop series and related
events held in Cairns, Nambour, Caboolture and Brisbane over the period
from September 2004 to March 2005, touching on the variety, complexity
and richness of this approach to sound and performance workshops.
The Tool Kit provides a sense of the activities, accomplishments and potentials of Sound Circles. It gives an overview of a group workshop approach to the development of voice/ sound and performance skills and clarifies that there are a range of entry points to the Sound Circles process. It demonstrates applicability of Sound Circles process across mixed ability groups in a range of contexts including educational, corporate and general community contexts. Suggested Use of
the Tool Kit Overview of the Sound Circle The basic Sound Circle comprises regular workshops attended by a group of interested people in order to develop skills and to experiment creatively in the realm of voice and sound with a view to some kind of performance outcome, formal or informal. The workshop series may be self-contained or the group may wish to link it to other community events or may invite others in to participate in a performance or process. Sound Circles
groups provide a space which values our own life experience as grist
for the creative mill, rather than just the experience of others who've
done the same but have become famous for it. Also it underlines the
functional place of artistic expression in our lives - that it's not
just about entertainment, but about shared experience and meaning.
It's not about your singing voice. It's about sound! This is a Sound Circle. It's about releasing sound from your body in what ever way it comes out. It stops that nervousness of ‘I have to sing well!’ Rachel Welsh- Participant It takes away the pressure. It’s focussed more on self-exploration rather than competing to be the best. Stacey – Participant During the series of workshops, facilitators and/ or host organisations may also link individuals or subgroups of the Sound Circle to other activities indicated by the specific enthusiasms or directions of those people. These connections with other community activities and organisations can form the foundation for future partnerships and development of your Sound Circle. Essential Ingredients for Sound Circles 1. Host
Organisation and Co-ordinator 1. Host Organisation
and Co-ordinator The co-ordinator of the project may be an employee of the organisation or someone engaged specifically for this project. The group facilitator may also be the co-ordinator if that person has project management skills and a good grasp of the Community Cultural Development process. If the host organisation does not have a formal business structure then a co-ordinator with greater financial knowledge may be required. Often the host organisation or the co-ordinator will be able to apply for funding or create sponsorship or in kind proposals to meet the resource needs of the project. Besides understanding how
to work to a budget, schedule and organise resources, it is imperative
that the co-ordinator understands the nature of the Sound Circle and
has a commitment to working in a democratic way, following the principles
of social justice and equity in negotiating with the facilitator and
group and the host and partner organisations. It is the co-ordinator’s
role to be clear when limits of available resources would be reached
so that the facilitator and group can make choices within a realistic
framework. It may also be the co-ordinator’s role to seek further
resources but in doing so, the co-ordinator would always be guided
by the needs and aspirations of the group.
The host organisation in Caboolture was CENTACARE (http://caboolturecentacare.catholicau.com/index.html ), a body concerned with employment and training for people with disabilities. CENTACARE offers a TAFE course and it was a TAFE arts teacher who saw the potential of a Sound Circle as a valid educational tool for performing arts modules. So in this case it was the facilitator who brought the Sound Circle to the host who had willing participants and supplied the venue and the transport! Arts Nexus, (www.artsnexus.com.au) in Cairns, has a broad brief to support arts and cultural development in far north Queensland. The Sound Circles project dovetailed with one of the organisation’s goals to increase arts and cultural opportunities for people with disabilities and it built on the foundation of the previous year’s Disability Action Week program. This organisation had the management and marketing capacity and through its vast network was able to find facilitators. 2. The facilitator
The facilitator needs to be comfortable with the idea of constantly reading the needs, energies and interests of group members in order to make the best decisions during the workshops. The responses from group members will indicate whether to modify the task in hand, move on to a more in depth or a more complex investigation, or change to a different mode of investigation or a different topic altogether. In this way the facilitator will keep the challenge of each new activity at such a level where participants will remain confident of being able to meet each challenge. The facilitator needs excellent grounding in sound/voice and/ or music composition and/ or performance to support their initial planning and development of the workshops on the floor. Sound Circles
I think is about developing a pool of common experience where people
can recognize and contribute their existing competence and can continue
to develop it through the activities of the group, and exposure to
the different abilities that other group members bring. What I think
can be assumed is that everyone will have contributions to make that
will enrich the whole. The facilitators' task is to recognise, value,
bring forward, and shape these contributions. This is an ongoing challenge
and delight for me as a facilitator - great when I can manage it,
and keeping me constantly on my toes. The facilitator needs to be transparent about why they are offering the group specific tasks or ways of working, or why they may be asking specific members of the group to try different tasks. They may need to take on the role of mediator when there is disagreement within the group and be a role model to demonstrate that it is possible to capitulate temporarily to the preferences of others and still have positive outcomes. As Access Arts was establishing the Sound Circles project, it incorporated a professional development aspect to support facilitators new to this mode of working. Frankie Armstrong (http://www.harbourtownrecords.com/armstrong.html and As Far as the Eye Can Sing, an autobiography by Frankie Armstrong with Jenny Pearson, The Women's Press Ltd, 1992) led an introductory session in Brisbane in early 2004 which inspired potential facilitators. Ann Bermingham, who has had a long term connection with Frankie’s work, took over the role of mentor to the facilitators across Queensland. Ann’s prior experience in working with people with disability and her strength in the facilitation of community choirs, was complemented by Rea Dennis’s skills in physical theatre and Yani’s in singing. The Caboolture and Nambour facilitators were also able to learn from Ann and Rea when they co-facilitated those groups. Nambour based Terri-Ann
Delaney, a long term facilitator of a community theatre group for
people with disability, had found herself on an exciting voice journey
discovering the delights of improvisation over the previous 18months.
She realised that this journey could be shared and many others journeys
begun through Sound Circles. Majella Jacobsen brought her
many years of experience in music education and therapy to co-facilitate
the Nambour group.
One of the many things
I've loved about working with Peter and Emma is that they've taken
on the Toolkit Project as a support and a challenge. Having contributed
to the making of it, they have taken it straight into the work that
they've done with the group. Peter said they were road-testing It.…working
consciously with the processes that have been named to see if they
really are sustainable and integrating it all at an astonishing rate
and with a wonderful sense of openness and transparency. Very inspiring! The newer facilitators all reported greatly appreciating the sensitivity of the more experienced mentors and felt affirmed in their own knowledge and inspired to go further. All this, despite the trepidation of putting themselves in the vulnerable position of having their own new skills on display and also offering access to their new groups. 3. Venue The venue will need a certain amount of privacy, initially, to encourage experimentation by participants. Passers by, visitors, or people in another part of the venue could become casual spectators. If this interferes with participants’ or facilitator’s focus, make arrangements to discourage spectators until the group has made the collective decision to have either an audience or visiting participants. This also signifies that the group may be ready to move into more exposed ‘venues’ such as parks and other public places. The venue needs reasonable acoustics, not necessarily concert quality, so that participants can appreciate what they are creating. It’s important to check whether there will be traffic or construction or other venue noise sufficient to interfere, occurring at the time of your sessions. Also, check that your Sound Circle activity will not cause undue disturbance of your neighbours by making contacts and offering information prior to commencement. Such venues are not always available as was the case for most of the Sound Circles recorded here. The venues included a repurposed stores building (http://www.brisbanepowerhouse.org ), parks, and a school hall. However, in Cairns, the group had a fabulous air-conditioned workshop space that fitted the bill completely, and a performance in repurposed oil storage tanks (http://www.cairns.qld.gov.au/council/services/tanks_art_centre.html )
The Brisbane Sound Circle had access to a piano in one venue and Access Arts Inc’s store of percussion instruments, plus the run of the Brisbane Powerhouse non-theatre spaces for public performance. The Cairns group made good use of the sound amplification and recording equipment of their facilitator and her performance colleague, a local high school music teacher. The Caboolture group had access to a range of tubular chimes and drums, but most activity in the Brisbane and Nambour Circles required no such resources. 5. The Group
When people get together
in groups such as these to make sound or to work musically the structures
of music and sound and rhythm, melody and harmony and texture and
all manner of things dynamic, are just such wonderful templates for
how we as human beings can live our lives. And so it is as if we can
have this little microcosm of the world that happens within the workshop.
No matter how the group is drawn together, the individuals bring their individual talents, aspirations and prior experience. It is essential that all this diversity is recognised in the way the facilitator(s) work, as this will optimise the outcomes for all involved. The diversity of the group is generally responsible for the richness of responses and the potential for peer to peer teaching and support. Sound Circles
give everyone an opportunity to share and to have our creative expression
acknowledged and supported. Through this process of sharing, our experiences
through sound, movement, story telling and song writing create an
exciting group journey. This has enabled people to explore different
art forms and the relationship between these and sound, both on an
individual and group level. In this way, each individual’s worth
within the group is able to be embraced. 6. The Community
Cultural Development (CCD) Process Sound Circles Strategies – the beginnings of a list o Establish nature of the
gathering at the outset and seek confirmation from group members that
they have a similar understanding Initially, we spent quite
a lot of our time asking for feedback from the group to make sure
we were meeting their expectations. We found this counterproductive
as it took an enormous amount of time and it didn't seem to be comfortable
for the group. So now we either ask whether anyone would like to share
their perspective, or more often we create opportunities for participants
to provide feedback through a sound activity. For example, writing
a song in a small group or developing a sound scape based on their
favourite Sound Circles memories. Not only is this more interesting
for the group, it also allows everyone to have a say, even those who
are generally less confident. Just from reading that
list, it is easy to see how a crystal clear definition of Community
Cultural Development may be problematic but it is a practice which
pivots around the principles of cultural democracy, self-determination,
collaborative art and cultural production and social justice. (See
www.ccd.net) The following quote expresses these principles in a
more formal way.
One of the keys to this approach is respect. From the outset, all stakeholders need to demonstrate clearly the mutually respectful behaviour that is expected of all people associated with the Sound Circle. This is such a powerful way to build an environment of safety and confidence to underpin the exploration of territories unknown within a group and to support new forays into co-operation, negotiation and leadership. The Caboolture group had
the opportunity to select two delegates to attend the Expo in Aichi,
Japan. To ensure that the participants understood the implications
of being chosen, the reasons for selecting only two people and how
to vote, the facilitator took great care to workshop the whole process.
The participants decided to have a secret ballot to choose from those
who had expressed interest, so the facilitator created ballot papers
with photos of the possible choices and then the group learned how
to vote. Only the participants voted. The first ballot gave rise to
a tie between three participants so there was a second ballot to decide
between the three. The group learned an important process and were
also happy to accept the results of their process. With respect in play, any mistakes or misunderstandings, are more easily resolved and can play a role in creating stronger bonds, greater trust and co-operation. The stronger these bonds become, the firmer the foundation from which individuals or the group can take greater creative risks. No group can be assumed to be uniform, although some may seem more so than others. The workshop tasks presented would have most likely never been attempted before with the same group of people and it may be that the group (in the case of a corporation group) has never been called on to be so self-revealing in areas where they do not profess to be expert. Hence it is paramount that facilitators and all group members accept task responses from other group members as valid. Sound Circle Activities As the name suggests, the Sound Circle activity often begins in a circle. This facilitates equal sharing of visual and auditory information and places all participants, be they singer, support worker, facilitator or carer, initially in a position equal to that of everyone else. The circle thus reinforces the aim not to privilege any offerings over any others. One of the core things
about Sound Circles for me is that we are focussed in co-creation,
both as a compositional device and as a way of connecting with each
other.
The activities can be presented
or viewed as ‘story telling’, whether or not the story
is told in words. Many of the stories are being told and shared for
the first time - as the group explores life within, around and outside
them selves, through sound. The exploration may involve sharing, imitating,
echoing, challenging, filling in the gaps, harmonising, dancing, etc.
As the responses come from the group, new sounds, new compositions
and new performances readily emerge. Some memorable examples included:- Participants gain a huge sense of achievement from composition processes. One way to start is to ask for suggestions on a theme for the composition and have the group make the final choice. Themes including ‘waking up in the morning to face the day’, ‘favourite pastimes’, ‘surroundings’, ‘adventures’, ‘space odysseys’ have all produced memorable outcomes. After settling on a theme, each person then contributes a word or short phrase. The group identifies a hook and then comes the style and a melody etc. The group may find it useful to build their own lyrics on the foundation of a fairly well known tune that they have previously identified, before plunging headlong into the depths of total originality! It was very productive
to use other mediums through which participants could explore expression
of sounds and music, for example, we used cloth to create three-dimensional
images for inspiration. For composition, we worked on themes that
group members initiated and working in small groups was very effective
for song-writing and percussion. Small group activities provide a valuable way to ensure that all members of the group have opportunities to participate and to allow sharing through short improvisations/ performances. The smaller group can play a large role in preparing individuals to contribute more robustly to the group as a whole as well as providing more simultaneous leadership and peer support opportunities. The small group is also an excellent tool for catering for diverse tastes, whether it be in choice of theme or musical genre. The speed composition potential of having multiple verses of a song being ‘written’ simultaneously by small groups, can result in euphoria on first hearing their song in its entirety as the groups sing the verses in sequence. When small groups work simultaneously on an identical task, such as building a sound scape from a specified stimulus, the variations in the outcomes also provide plenty of evidence for the existence of many satisfactory solutions to the one problem. Everyone who stands up and does a little bit of solo, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to do that, myself included. When you realise you can do this it gives you something really uplifting. Matt Parsey - Participant
By initially developing a familiar pattern in each workshop, participants come to understand the rationale behind the choice of activities and the need for change and development if often more apparent to the facilitator. It is also easier for participants to understand and enjoy the change if the facilitator needs to suggest a different way of working. Having a warm-up activity, involving name games and meet and greet tasks, has technical, safety and social roles. And by ensuring that the warm-up also includes an element or two to be explored in the body of the workshop, it is neatly providing a link to the rest of the work. Similarly, a closing ritual activity can be very helpful to prepare the group emotionally for leaving the Sound Circle session. As with all well-designed
workshops, the developmental and the synthesis tasks in between need
to relate strongly to each other to maintain a sense of direction
and enough challenge to keep up the motivation, excitement and sense
of achievement of the group. Of course, reflective activities can
be used to link with elements of previous workshops at any time as
suggested by the needs of the group and the direction of the workshop
at that time.
We created more of a collage
of activities as the group were really performance orientated. So
we introduced them to some new activities such as the sound scape
and the sound hoeing and that expanded their possibilities. I created
musical beds so the group could overlay their singing… The result
was really moving…so inspiring. As mentioned earlier in this guide, it is useful to have at least a weekly gathering over a period of 8 weeks for the Sound Circle. This seems to give enough time for group formation and exploration of a range of tasks and development of enough confidence for an informal performance shared with friends and family. If members have plenty of previous experience and skills then public performance in eight weeks may be possible. The Caboolture TAFE group knew each other and worked as a group prior to experiencing Sound Circles. They also met twice a week for at least 5 hours per day so that is why they were able to create so many performance pieces. The Brisbane group were able to take the opportunity to present at the Access Arts members’ days, on one occasion including visitors from both the Nambour and Caboolture Circles. Sound Circle as a flexible link to diverse activities We are interested in looking at other ways of perceiving sound, for example through vibrating floors, making sound beds and working with balloons as well. I envisage some of our movement pieces might involve vibrating spheres, (big balloons that vibrate) Di Collier-Facilitator We would like to bring one or two of the songs to fruition, so they can be performed or recorded. Emma Bennison-Facilitator We would like to expand
into other art forms- mask-making, dance, movement. Within the activities of Sound Circles many opportunities can be found to link to other community events as well as creating entire events. Given the right introduction it is possible to invite the general public into the process of making a Sound Scape with the Sound Circle members. The Nambour Sound Circle was invited to participate in ‘Splash!’ a Sunshine Coast Community project, to raise awareness and celebrate water. The group created a sound bath to accompany the ‘pouring of the waters’. Through this, the group was able to participate in a multi-disciplinary event, involving many other community groups. The Cairns Sound Circle did this recently at Malanda Falls in the Atherton Tablelands. They developed the idea of making a community wish and sending it on the sound of the circle up with the spray of the waterfall to the rainforest. Both the Cairns
and Caboolture Sound Circles created specific performances,
which were publicly presented. In Cairns the final performance of the first workshop series was amplified and had both live and pre-recorded musical accompaniment. As these workshops were held on a Saturday afternoon, they brought family members into the Circle and it had a very social recreational feel. This eventually led to the creation of a fortnightly karaoke gathering. Throughout the various Sound Circles, certain individual talents and desires surfaced and many links were made in order for those individuals to pursue their aspirations more readily. New leaders were recognised, such as Peter and Emma who became the facilitators of the Brisbane group. Sound Circles have opened up so many possibilities for me. I can now hear music in my head at all times. I can feel the music ringing and singing in my head. I can make up songs day and night. Michael Russell-Participant That thought of mine to write this song (Dreams Come True) is to show what I can do. I have a disability but I have ability too! Stephen Sakach - Participant At times I was able to
fly without fear in my singing. In the circle, one would just take
off and this whole new thing would happen. It was magic. In Cairns, Stephen Sakach, made his visioning and organising skills known so he is being mentored to develop as a facilitator. John Rowles, a high school student, assisted in the recordings made at the school and thus gained his first paid employment as the technical assistant for the Cairns Sound Circle public performance. Various members of that Circle also gained the opportunity to perform at the launch of International Day for People with a Disability. Towards further information and ideas Resources for the kind of activities used in Sound Circles come from the breadth and depth of arts and cultural practice, education and training, recreation and management. Many supporting publications are available (For example, see http://www.qldcan.org.au/index.php and choose “Library”) but nothing is quite like practice. The facilitators involved in Sound Circles have all spoken of the incredible learning and support gained from experiencing other facilitators’ work in action. The value of professional development with other facilitators cannot be underestimated and the sources of such opportunities are usually found with various arts and cultural organisations. Echoes of Life In a real test of the Sound Circles process, twelve participants and facilitators are travelling to Aichi in Japan to share it with members of Tanpopo-No-Ye and attendees at the Expo 2005 Aichi Japan NGO Global Village in a partnership called Inochi no Hibiki (Echoes of Life). Through consultation and collaboration in voice and performance, they will together create presentations for the many visitors. Sound Circles
creates an environment in which we quickly learn to accept and value
ourselves and each other as unique individuals with our own interests,
needs and talents, and to celebrate our diversity! The Tool Kit has been contributed to by many people, all of whom have had some stake in Sound Circles. I thank them for this extension of the Sound Circles process, in the hope that many more Sound Circles experiences can be created in the future. All who have been involved in the development of this tool kit have sent out their waves of sound. May all future Sound Circlers find the best circumstances to be supported by what has gone before. We welcome your feedback and experiences and will acknowledge your contribution as you join with us on this exciting Sound Circles journey. Julie Chenery |
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