Something cool Ruth's been doing...
"Time Flies" Project with South Poplar Traditional Elementary School
In February 2008, the South Poplar Traditional Elementary School in Abbotsford, B.C. contracted me to be their artist-in-residence. The rural school, on Huntingdon Road near Clearbrook, is celebrating their 75th year and a couple of the teachers, Sharon Huget and Heather Preiss, wanted to mark the milestone with something special.
Sharon and Heather had the idea to bring in a singer-songwriter who would work with the kids to write songs about the school's history, perform those songs at a concert, record the performance and turn it into a CD. They pitched the idea to ArtStarts, an organization that offers programs to educators to promote arts and creativity. ArtStarts liked the concept and agreed to provide partial funding in the form of a grant. The "Time Flies" project was born.
During the month of February, I worked with 10 classes of kids from Kindergarten to Grade 5, teaching them about songwriting and helping each class write a song. All the classes had a pre-assigned topic from the Time Flies theme, each related in some way to 75 years of school. For example, the Grade 5 topic was about how the the cost of things had changed in 75 years. One Grade 3 class wrote about "teachers", and the other Grade 3 class wrote about how a typical school day had changed over the years.
I met with each class once a week for about 5 weeks. They'd all done some research on their subjects, so I took down their ideas, rhyming words they'd come up with, etc. and we came up with an idea and maybe a first verse or chorus for the song. Then I went away and wrote the rest of the lyrics and brought them back in for the kids and teachers to read and suggest changes.
Once the lyrics were done, I got the kids to help me come up with a melody for each song. I actually relied on their suggestions because a blues singer writing 10 songs in the space of a few weeks...well, you could end up with a lot of 12-bars. And, I really wanted the melodies to sound like songs kids would sing. I put some chords behind the melodies and entered them into Band-in-a-Box, then let the kids try out different styles for each of their songs. It was very cool because the kids caught on right away to the idea that while they might like a musical style, it didn't necessarily work with the lyrics we'd written.
I took those building blocks away and finished out the songs. Then I took my Band-in-a-Box files to musician/arranger extraordinaire, Bill Buckingham. He sweetened up the sounds and arrangements and turned the files into backing tracks. I recorded a quick guide vocal and took the songs back to the school. (Man, I love being in the studio!)
I've spent a few days at the school since then, helping the teachers rehearse the songs with the kids and working out details for the concert. The concert is happening on Tues, May 13, at the Abbey Arts Centre in Abbotsford, and the CD will be available in June. I'll post more info as we go.
As the project develops and people hear the songs, there's a lot of interest developing. VANOC is going to be featuring the project on their website very soon, and they sent a crew to video-tape one of the performances. I'll post that link when it's available.
Sheryl MacKay of CBC Radio's North by Northwest show invited me in for an interview that's going to air on May 10/08. Cheryl was on vacation so I spoke with Cameron Phillips. Click here to listen to the interview (plays in RealPlayer).
And the Abbotsford News ran a nice photo on the front page of the May 4/08 issue.
This project has been really interesting and I think there's more to come with it. The concerts on May 13 were a tremendous success, and now I'm just finishing up the CD.
I'll keep you posted :-)
Ruth
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