Tag Archives: folk music

Call Out for East Music 2

Musicians! You’re invited to East Music: Song and Tune Exchange Session at Poplar Union on Saturday 6 July

After an incredible pilot session, we are thrilled to be back at Poplar Union for a Summer Edition this July. 

Bring your instruments and voices along with songs or tunes from across the world to play, sing and share. There may be an opportunity to play to a live audience later in the evening.

This is a free, friendly and inclusive session for players of all levels of experience. Global Majority* and LGBTQ+ music makers are particularly welcome. The session will be led by one of our East musicians.

Date: Saturday 6th July 2024

Time: 4-6.30PM

Duration: 2.5 hours including a 30 minute break

Location: Poplar Union

Ages: 18+

(Im)Mobile Incitement

We should be on tour now with Gerrard Winstanley’s True and Righteous Mobile Incitement Unit. Today we would have been at Slung Low’s venue The Holbeck. Slung Low’s work during the pandemic has been a source of inspiration nationwide, and it’s hard to think of a better place for a piece of theatre that’s all about reclaiming the collective, progressive side of England’s chequered past. Hopefully we can be there in 2021.

Health and the preservation of life obviously come first so we’re happy to postpone. But one of the ironies of the situation is that the original version of Mobile Incitement, made well before the first case of Covid-19 was detected, was an outdoor show and naturally quite socially-distant. Not only our subject matter but our format are truly of our time! Still, we need to be confidently past the worst of the pandemic before we can tour. John Ball, during the Peasants’ Revolt, famously declared that “Now is the time”. But right now, no, it isn’t.

We need your help

We had to stop everything at the beginning of lockdown, including our fundraising. We applied for emergency funding but didn’t get it. We’re holding fire on our touring show Mobile Incitement. But, with so many people isolated by coronavirus and its knock-on effects, this is absolutely the right time for our storytelling project, East.

The whole East project is about bringing people together, creating links between different communities, and sharing stories and songs. It’s about friendship, sharing and multiculturalism, and the way songs and stories can help us deal with what the world throws at us. It’s not on a huge scale and may not sound grand – it certainly doesn’t seem to appeal much to major funders – but we believe it’s very valuable work. East London is home to an extraordinarily diverse range of people, but many folks don’t really know others outside their own communities, at least not socially. It’s also a place where wealth and poverty, privilege and marginalisation, and indeed tolerance and bigotry, sit side by side. And it’s a place facing many threats and challenges that would benefit from greater solidarity and co-operation. The need to build bridges, share experiences and learn from others is clear. We think that the exchange of stories and songs, and, more importantly, the learning and re-telling of each other’s stories and songs, is a richly rewarding way to address this need.

But, although lockdown is easing, our normal format – bringing people together around a table with food and singing and stories – is still a long way from being viable. So we’ve come up with a plan to move the project online. Some of it is straightforward, such as adding to our online archive so as to make more material available in the absence of live events, but some is more exploratory. We’re not exactly sure how best to reconfigure our gatherings but we have lots of ideas to try, and by the end of this project we’ll be able to take our work forward in new ways that will be valuable even when live events are possible again. “Resilience” is a word that is perhaps overused at the moment, but that’s exactly what this particular stage in the life of East is about.

We’ve launched a crowdfunding appeal to make all this happen. It only seems right for a project so embedded in our communities to be supported by our communities. Please take a look at our video and then click through to our crowdfunding page.

Our promo video for the new online East

If you can give, please do. But whether or not you donate, do please spread the word. It may sound like a cliche, but it really does make a difference!

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/eaststorytellingonline

Photos: Mobile Incitement at Latitude

Andy and Payam took some great photos of our performance at Latitude.  Here’s a selection. You can see more here.

Project details are all here.

Thanks, Latitude!

In the van, left to right: Sarah Jeanpierre, Payam Torabi and Rhiannon Kelly. In front of the van, left to right: Andy Bannister, Martin MacFadyen, Matt Beattie, Dan Cox and Paul Burgess.

Well, that was amazing. Huge thanks to Latitude Festival  for giving us, along with our project partners Rua Arts and The Black Smock Band, the chance to bring Gerrard Winstanley’s True and Righteous Mobile Incitement Unit (aka ) to the festival. Thanks also to Ovalhouse, who commissioned it in the first place, and to Queen Mary University of London who supported the development of our participation programme. Last but not least, thanks to all the lovely people who joined us in the Faraway Forest and shared their experiences and knowledge. Ye noble Diggers all, stand up now!

SaveSave

SaveSave

#MobileIncitement

A raucous folk gig, a community-centred political gathering and a bold reclamation of England’s radical history… It’s…

GERRARD WINSTANLEY’S
TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS
MOBILE INCITEMENT UNIT

Made with Rua Arts and The Black Smock Band, Mobile Incitement (as we call it for short – #mobileincitement on social media) was commissioned by Ovalhouse and shown at Brixton City Festival. Its participation programme was then developed at Queen Mary uni, prior to a show at Poplar Union. It’s then at Latitude Festival before touring late 2018 into 2019. Get in touch to book us or find out more or, if you’ve seen it, give us your feedback: www.daedalustheatre.co.uk