June 7th and 8th saw the third Bradford Forest Fest, this time based in the stunning grounds of Riddlesden St. Mary's Primary School in Keighley.
The keynote speech was given by the ever inspiring 'Didgeridoo Man' Chris Holland. The theme of the talk was 'A Sense of Place'. This prompted much thoughtful discussion about what gives us that sense of place from environment and architecture to relationships and interactions. Chris also ran one of the four workshops held over the weekend. His workshop encouraged us to think about how nature can inspire music. He invited us to look for a stick that interested us, consider its properties, what it reminded us of and what sound it may make. Once our sounds had been decided upon and and shared with the circle we then began to build our musical score. The 'conductor' stood at the centre and pointed to members of the circle to prompt them to make their sound. The musical circle burst into life with a cacophony of wooshes, crackles, boings, oinks, dings and roars.
Next, our sticks were transformed into nature microphones. We set off, microphones in hand to see what sounds of nature we could capture from blades of grass stretching to the sky, to spiders balancing on quivering webs. Sounds collected, we worked in small groups to combine our recordings into our own little rhythms of nature.
Finally we looked at how we can map our area using a wheel of natural materials collected from our surroundings. We also touched upon how we can use sounds to map our environment.
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At Forest School this week, we have been looking at this concept in more detail. The children chose a place in the wood that appealed to them before settling down to record the sounds on the woodland. They marked a dot at the centre of their paper to represent where they were and then used a compass to mark on the compass points. Next they listened to the sounds around them and recorded them on the paper in images, words, sound waves or combination of the three.
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After a period of quiet contemplation, we re-grouped to discuss our findings. We talked about why certain sounds such as birdsong, or industrial sounds were grouped in particular area. We shared our thoughts on how the sound of a magpie may look different to a song thrush when written as a sound wave. And we considered why a sound map may be useful. One of the children suggested that for someone with hearing loss, it would help them to build up a picture of the sounds of the woodland. Another child suggested that if you were lost in the woods, a sound map would help to guide you towards civilization.
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As well as making sound maps much fun was had creating our own stick orchestras. It is fair to say that the children's sense of rhythm proved to be considerably better than mine!
The keynote speech was given by the ever inspiring 'Didgeridoo Man' Chris Holland. The theme of the talk was 'A Sense of Place'. This prompted much thoughtful discussion about what gives us that sense of place from environment and architecture to relationships and interactions. Chris also ran one of the four workshops held over the weekend. His workshop encouraged us to think about how nature can inspire music. He invited us to look for a stick that interested us, consider its properties, what it reminded us of and what sound it may make. Once our sounds had been decided upon and and shared with the circle we then began to build our musical score. The 'conductor' stood at the centre and pointed to members of the circle to prompt them to make their sound. The musical circle burst into life with a cacophony of wooshes, crackles, boings, oinks, dings and roars.
Next, our sticks were transformed into nature microphones. We set off, microphones in hand to see what sounds of nature we could capture from blades of grass stretching to the sky, to spiders balancing on quivering webs. Sounds collected, we worked in small groups to combine our recordings into our own little rhythms of nature.
Finally we looked at how we can map our area using a wheel of natural materials collected from our surroundings. We also touched upon how we can use sounds to map our environment.
.JPG)
At Forest School this week, we have been looking at this concept in more detail. The children chose a place in the wood that appealed to them before settling down to record the sounds on the woodland. They marked a dot at the centre of their paper to represent where they were and then used a compass to mark on the compass points. Next they listened to the sounds around them and recorded them on the paper in images, words, sound waves or combination of the three..JPG)
After a period of quiet contemplation, we re-grouped to discuss our findings. We talked about why certain sounds such as birdsong, or industrial sounds were grouped in particular area. We shared our thoughts on how the sound of a magpie may look different to a song thrush when written as a sound wave. And we considered why a sound map may be useful. One of the children suggested that for someone with hearing loss, it would help them to build up a picture of the sounds of the woodland. Another child suggested that if you were lost in the woods, a sound map would help to guide you towards civilization..JPG)
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