On the road to income sustainability....things ukulele

What a boring title - oh well.

Things have grown great in the last few months.

The Ukastle Ukestra is reaching new heights (up to 35 people one evening), and the feel is changing to something more raucous. But it has always had the seeds of raucousness. LakeMacUkestra is more staid, and fluctuating in numbers. 9 last week, something like 18 this week.

And the Bay (Tomaree Ukestra) is increasing, incrementally. 2 one week, 7 last week. 7 is good! It is most pleasant sitting outside at the Fingal Bay Sports Club, rain or shine. The cuckoos are going off in the bush around, kangaroos feed on the lawn. Ukuleles strum. V. pleasant. My drink of choice is ginger beer. And there are free peanuts.

I am now bolting off from the Tomaree Ukestra to head to Bobs Farm Public School. Student population = 40. I have a quarter of the students doing uke. My first school!!!! This is vital for my income sustainability. NEIS ends in February and I need to have a large enough and diverse enough income to be sustainable.

It is so great to be working with kids. I miss having my own kids (who have largely grown up and live far away) so I am enjoying that aspect of it. I am looking forward to the first performances. A few people advised me to only work with Grades 3-6, as younger are too difficult. But I am prepared to give that a go at the moment, and I think I have a few Grade 1s & 2s. It was funny, because the 'primary' school kids said wryly 'are you teaching the little kids? Good luck with that!'. Bobs Farm is a lovely school, like something up the north coast, set amidst palms and mosquitos. Address - Marsh Road.

On Wednesday I started at Hamilton Public, an inner city school in Newcastle, with an ethnically diverse population. David Jack is the Principal there and he is a renowned innovator. The Uke is part of his grand plan, and my suggestions appealed to him instantly.

It has been an interesting process trying to drum up schools. David was the first to go 'yes! I want that for my school!'. Megan (Bobs Farm Principal) did the same. An email did the trick and I have now got it down to 'you will either like this idea or not, and you will have room or not, please just reply quickly and we can talk if you are interested'. I really dislike it when people say they will get back to you, and they don't. But it is very reassuring when people do get back and say 'not today' or, 'I have a headache', or, 'our program is full'. At least I then know. I am pretty sure I will have a full board of calls of schools next year.

The Ukastle Ukestra have been accepted to play down at the Melbourne Ukulele Festival in February - this will be our first major outing away from Newcastle. And a whole bunch of people are performing at Roy Sakuma's Hawaii Ukulele Festival in July. I am yet to decide whether I can afford that! It's hard keeping up with the well heeled retirees!!!!

Let's not forget Maitland. I am enjoying all my Ukestras, with Maitland no exception. It is held at the Grand Junction Hotel and Liss, the publican, is one of my main participants. Her and Ben have cultivated a wonderful musical culture at this pub and hence the ukestra participants are very well schooled in alternative music (folky / country sort of inflections). The numbers there will grow, I am sure.

We have decided to have our Hunter Christmas Uke Party up there, where people will be catching a train to the pub from Newcastle - the Uke Train!!!

Further ramblings on starting a community musician biznes

Good morning. The only time I seem to find for doing this is during occasional moments of 3/4am insomnia.

The last 3 weeks has been hellish fun/busy/too busy. Mostly with 'professional development'. What a wonderful thing it is to have professional development which is a joy.

The beginning of the 3 weeks was holidaying with Ruby. Treachery Head proved its name correct and destroyed the camper trailer. Cables broke. This is the main accommodation device for festivals, so that was a blow. Thanks to Stan (distant-father-in-law twice removed of ex sister in law type) we fixed that and I was then able to move onto the National Folk Festival with Jane.

The National is and should be an annual pilgrimage. It is how life should be lived, without nuclear weapons and with lots of music, good food (well...ok...healthy....fastish food), dancing in the streets and diversity. I was not accepted to play this year, so at the urging of Jane, and at the last minute I applied to be a volunteer. Came up with 'stewarding' which wouldn't be my preference (mc'ing, stage managing yes, stewarding - no). It involved five 4 hour shifts on a twentyfour hour roster, two of them at 4am. Turned out to be interesting and vaguely fun.

I workshopped a lot, enjoying Kristina Olsen's 'playing lead guitar for dummies', Frank Jones' 'how to steal a song', and Ben Stephenson's awesome DADGAD / Irish guitar workshop. And the Kwela stuff with Andy Rigby was fun, as always. I learned a lot, did some choir type workshops and came home to do the uke Tuesdays.

Both the LakeMacUkestra and the Ukastle Ukestra are doing quite well and evolving at different paces. I also now have approval from the Fingal Bay Sports Club to try out a Port Stephens Ukestra (Ukestra Port Stephens? Ups?). Heaven's waiting room can have a ukestra as well I reckon. Will try and get PR happening v. soon. The Bay is where I grew up each and every weekend. So it is a vaguely attractive idea to head there once a week and to see if I can bring more uke joy to the lots of retirees who seem to hold the fort up there.

THEN. I bolted off to Melbourne. Saw Kyrie's premiere of her first feature film, a rather B-D grade horror slasher film called El Monstro Del Mar. She is the nice girl, Hannah. As it should be for my daughter. My youngest (Ruby) was also in it, as a school bus extra (which is a rather accurate reflection!).

But the PD continued in Melbourne, seeing some very old friends who are community musician types, talking and playing endlessly about how to bring music to the people. Peda & Ruth in Inverloch are very very inspiring, as are the Strating twins and Lyndal and Strat. Thanks so much to all of them for helping me with resources and thinking and music.

That should do for now. I hope it ain't so long to the next post, and that the next one is more reflective.