we can all make music

telling our stories

The pause that refreshes

The CMV quarterly newsletter Sing It! is built on stories from group singing. Readers tell us they find this material inspirational. They (we) see in the stories of others reflections of their (our) own experiences. We can gain confidence, ideas, insight, uplift, energy and connectedness from knowing that others are on the same journey.

Singing, dancing and eating together are joyful experiences. They can also be difficult, intermittent, even painful at times. The stories that emerge from the happenings that create these highs and lows need to be told because:

they remind those having similar experiences that it is a shared reality and that we can learn from each other
they illustrate to those who haven't experienced the processes of singing together what the effects can be
they consolidate these recollections in our own cultural memory banks, and help to give us a (shared) perspective on our lives
storytelling (and story listening) is of itself a rewarding experience; it is another aspect of confident expression
these are stories that deserve a life of their own; for our culture to be really healthy, it needs to be as full of the tales of making music together as it is of the doings of stars and wannabe stars.

The Vocal Nosh model makes space for interactions other than singing. Unstructured chat has always been an essential part of what goes on. It is enjoyable to discover who you're singing with, what they do, where they are going, how the experiences you have just shared have changed them - just as it is enjoyable to let others know your experience of these things.

So far, we haven't offered any practical advice on how such chat might be facilitated (let alone exchanged beyond the moment). We've hoped that it would just happen - and in many cases, it has (the telling, that is) and through Sing It!, exchange has started.

Without introducing too much structure, we've found ourselves wondering whether some of the non-singing time at Noshes might be used for some collective self-reflection.

Telling each other our journeys and how singing together has affected us is another step in the exercise of connecting. It may also become an important way of showing others just how profound the changes that occur through this process are.

We're still just talking about this without a very clear idea of where to go with these ideas. What we are convinced of is that it's very important. All suggestions welcome.

we can all make music

telling our stories

The pause that refreshes

making a sound world together