We are delighted to launch the resources that have been developed concurrently with the collaborative writing of Lockdown Life. Two lead artists, two young artists, six developing young artist mentees and a life coach and storyteller worked together over six months. After much planning, brainstorming, discussion about this past extraordinary year, one-to-one mentoring and sharing, the team wrote the song Lockdown Life. Shammi Pithia and Michael Goodey produced the song while mentoring the mentees. Georgia Thorp provided mentoring one-to-one sessions and wrote the Zak Story based on the song lyrics. We were delighted to have Caro X share a BSL performance of the song. The young artists rose to the challenges of leading sessions and recording vocals. One of the young artists wrote this wrote this:
“ The songwriting sessions have been going grea., Everybody has a great creative voice but always listens to other people’s input. We established the direction of the song pretty early, so it’s just been building and polishing that idea from then onwards”.
Abbi Asante
You can see all of the team at work in the seven short film excerpts below (YouTube links in the Handbook)
We have created a Handbook (PDF) and a Presentation (PDF) for primary, or secondary teachers and community leaders to encourage their groups to write a song collaboratively. This is a chance to share stories, discuss and explore the experiences of this past year and to enjoy creating something together from it, a powerful way to process and return to sharing space in real time. This is a fully flexible Resource Pack for leaders to draw on as they choose. The films were not made to script, but rather a ‘fly on the wall’ capture of the creative process that is Artist Approach.
We’d like to thank Arts Council England for funding this essential project.