March 2010
Welcome to the Music. Play for Life campaign newsletter, issued to campaign supporters on a regular basis to bring new achievements, updates and stories from around the country. More about the campaign at www.musicplayforlife.org
In this Issue
Community music gathering in the 'Gong
2010 date announced!
With support from The Australian Government plans for Music: Count Us In 2010 are in full swing. Mark your diaries for this year's culminating date: Thursday, 2nd September 2010, 11.30am AEST. Registration opens soon at www.musicountusin.org.au. Revisit last year's excitement by seeing how the weeks of learning and rehearsing came together in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra here.
URGENT: Calling all student songwriters!
If you're in Year 9 or above and write great songs, or know of any students who fit the bill, here's your chance to be part of the songwriting team which writes the 'Song That Stops Australia'. Make a one minute submission and if your idea is picked you'll be one of a small group of students from around Australia who will get to work with a celebrity songwriter Mentor, as well as producer, John Foreman. Visit the website: www.musiccountusin.org.au to find out more and download the song brief. But be quick! We need your ideas by Monday 29th March.
Good luck!
Where are they now?
Speaking of Music: Count Us In, we caught up with one of the student songwriters from MCUI 2008, Charlotte Nicdao, to find out what she'd been up to in the past year:
So... my last year has been pretty hectic. I left VCASS and did my year twelve by correspondence in order to film a new children's television show with Southern Star Productions. It is called "Gurl's Wurld" and I play a lead character, Jackie, and I had to learn to dance for the part (we also recorded an album as part of the soundtrack of the show... also an interesting experience as it was very different from the music I would usually pursue). I travelled to Sydney, Singapore and Germany to shoot, and it was really great working in different parts of the world.
I got back to Melbourne in August (having been away since January), and apart from a little bit of post-production basically got on with my life pre-TV-show, finished my Year 12 and this year I am doing the VCA music improvisation foundation program on voice. I'm looking forward to playing with a bunch of musicians, and maybe doing some gigs around the place. After such a strange, out-of-the-blue year I'm still completely interested in music and I know that it's what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
Liv (Olivia Hally, one of the other '08 songwriters) and I were going past Fed Square on the morning of the Music: Count Us In 2009 song being sung - we were very nostalgic and we wanted to join in!
Making Music Being Well - 17 - 23 May 2010
Registrations keep coming as people all over Australia sign up to take part in this year's Making Music Being Well week. The week-long focus on the links between active music making and wellbeing takes place between 17 - 23 May, with individuals and communities making their contributions to the week in many different ways. For example, Melbourne music therapist, Emma O'Brien, is coordinating a huge music festival at the Royal Melbourne hospital involving local high school students and the ACT's community music organisation, Music for Everyone - a Music in Communities Award winner - is aiming for, among other things, Canberra's biggest-ever classical acoustic guitar ensemble on 22nd May. It's not too late to download the music and get practicing at www.mfe.org.au.
Mackay Regional Council, Burdekin Library, Clarence Valley Conservatorium, Dandenong Ranges Music Council, Chooks on a Hot Tin Roof ukulele group in South Coast NSW, Perth's Princess Margaret Hospital, Wollongong Conservatorium, VCA Secondary School, Yangebup Primary School in WA and Victoria's Southern Health authority are just some of the many groups hitching their wagon to the national celebration.
The online 'What's On' area of the site is now live and gives everyone the opportunity to post news of how they are getting behind the initiative at their workplace or community group. Posters and promotional flyers are at the printers and will go out to all registrants absolutely free, plus there are some downloadable pdfs available from the website.
Put your thinking cap on and find a way to get involved with your colleagues, friends and family! Be part of the national celebration of the links between music making and wellbeing.
Community music gathering in the 'Gong'
The Music in Communities Network will run a one-day conference at Wollongong Conservatorium, an hour from Sydney, on Friday 21st May, providing community music leaders and players, music therapists and others an opportunity to connect and share skills. To register your interest in attending, or presenting, please email us at admin@musicincommunities.org.au
If you're a music teacher, check out the new music education portal developed by the Music Council of Australia, at musiceducation.edu.au. It'll help you get inspired and is a gateway to an astonishing array of resources which will help you in the classroom.
Music. Play for Life
Tel: 02 4454 3887
admin.mpfl@mca.org.au
www.musicplayforlife.org
'Music. Play for Life', the Music Council of Australia's grassroots campaign to get more Australians making music: in schools, communities, everywhere.
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