Post by maxxengland on Jan 27, 2010 22:51:23 GMT
This is a copy of what I just sent to Barry Reeves. Hope it explains clearly what we're about.
A brief history and explanation:
we started out a few years ago as volunteer musicians in a community outreach project for people suffering from isolation due to mental health. The funding ended but we thought this free and open musical access to all and sundry, without labels or barriers, was too good to let go of, so last year we formed ourselves into this cooperative venture.
We have a Lottery money bid in place, currently being filtered through the bureaucratic maze, with no clear decision in sight about getting the amount we put in for, part of it or none of it.
The funds will be used for renovation of the rehearsal room we use, repair/replacement/maintainance of equipment, transport where needed of bodies and kit, but mostly it will be aimed at taking the service users into a recording studio and letting them put down a few tracks of their choice and then they will have CDs to sell or whatever. They will certainly have a lasting memento of an achievement which they might not otherwise have reached.
For anyone affluent and confident, to go to a studio would simply be a matter of picking up a phone to arrange it and then do it. For anyone living here on Chelmsley Wood, this is pipedream territory as we are one of the most socially and financially deprived areas in the West Midlands. Some journalists look on benefit claimants as being idle scroungers; some undoubtedly are, but most of them are people defeated and ground down by the punitive nature of the system which immediately knocks them down to their knees as soon as they try to stand on their own two feet.
What Music Machine is here for is to give anyone who wants it the encouragement to do something artistic, something the system can't take off them, and so give them the courage to carry on trying. We're here, in our stumbling way, working at making our world a better place.
Maxx
A brief history and explanation:
we started out a few years ago as volunteer musicians in a community outreach project for people suffering from isolation due to mental health. The funding ended but we thought this free and open musical access to all and sundry, without labels or barriers, was too good to let go of, so last year we formed ourselves into this cooperative venture.
We have a Lottery money bid in place, currently being filtered through the bureaucratic maze, with no clear decision in sight about getting the amount we put in for, part of it or none of it.
The funds will be used for renovation of the rehearsal room we use, repair/replacement/maintainance of equipment, transport where needed of bodies and kit, but mostly it will be aimed at taking the service users into a recording studio and letting them put down a few tracks of their choice and then they will have CDs to sell or whatever. They will certainly have a lasting memento of an achievement which they might not otherwise have reached.
For anyone affluent and confident, to go to a studio would simply be a matter of picking up a phone to arrange it and then do it. For anyone living here on Chelmsley Wood, this is pipedream territory as we are one of the most socially and financially deprived areas in the West Midlands. Some journalists look on benefit claimants as being idle scroungers; some undoubtedly are, but most of them are people defeated and ground down by the punitive nature of the system which immediately knocks them down to their knees as soon as they try to stand on their own two feet.
What Music Machine is here for is to give anyone who wants it the encouragement to do something artistic, something the system can't take off them, and so give them the courage to carry on trying. We're here, in our stumbling way, working at making our world a better place.
Maxx