Up and away from Carlisle bright and early at 6.30am heading South for a wee diversion from the Trek, albeit of course a Rhythmical one.
I had agreed to run a series of workshops for the morning at a school in the Forest of Bowland. After a bit of a faff finding the school, it being literally in the middle of nowhere, I got set up and ran two one hour sessions for 7-11 and 5-7 year olds and then brought them all together for half an hour at the end.
I did ERS with the younger group and some simple Kpanlogo with the older kids. I taught them all a Kpanlogo song with movement and we had a blast. The session finished with a short DrumTrek video clip on the school whiteboard.
Fun morning. Beautiful area.
I then headed back North and then East towards Newcastle, my evening destination.
I arrived in plenty of time and got myself a shower and was fed and watered by the lovely Alison who also laid on brekky materials and gave me the keys to the house to chill tomorrow before I head South to Wakefield.
Thank You that lovely lady x
Many moons ago a number of drummers from Newcastle attended the UK Playshop training. Among them were my organisers Simon Wood and Mark Barfoot and also Sue Amey.
Simon had to be away to party in a field somewhere ( Hope you’re having fun mate) but both Mark and Sue ( along with 3 crazy young girls) showed up. It was so good to see them again as Newcastle has always been a place I have fond memories of and good connections with and we had some really solid and large community circles back then. There still seems to be the appetite for this kind of event judging by the evening attendance and engagement.
It turned out there were a couple of other Playshop grads at the evening circle as well as representatives from Drummed Up Mark’s West African Group.
This was gonna be a fun circle.
So it proved.
Our first groove was a freeform jam that was really connected. I did a bit of dcf’ing just to open up the idea of someone being in the middle and had a wee chat about some of the principles of Arthurian style Drum Circles. Then we did a lovely facilitated drum section followed by a layered in percussion only jam and boomwhacker piece ( including a 6/8 jam) We were having fun. So were the kids who kidnapped me and sent me to ‘Jail’ for 10 minutes!!!
As the evening progressed all the elements were present for me to GOOW (Get Out of The Way) for the final session.
So I did.
Here is a clip from the latter jam. Check out the ‘kids’ zone in the foreground 😉
Big Thanks to Mark and Simon and everyone who showed up to share their Spirit.
Mileage today: 210
Cumulative: 1358
DrumTrek 
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