Community Outreach
Community outreach is an important mandate of the Home County Folk League. This year Home County created new community partnerships and outreach programs including:
Sessions for Songwriters
Starting out as a Culture Days event at the end of Sept 2010, this initiative grew to include monthly artist interviews about songwriting and career development with artists David Essig, Emm Gryner, David Francey, Tom Wilson, Stephen Fearing and Andy White. The sessions also included song-circles for local songwriters to share their songs and to give and receive peer feedback. A core group emerged and several of these ‘regulars’ will perform on the Community Stage on Sunday July 17 at 3 pm. We’ll continue these sessions in the fall of 2011. If you’d like to participate, watch the website for the 2011-12 schedule.
Home County Folk Festival Artists in the Schools Project funded by the Cultural Strategic Investment Fund
Home County received $13,000 from the Ontario Ministry of Tourism & Culture, as well as support from TD Bank Group for this project. Four award-winning artists worked intensively with TVDSB high school students over several days to:
- collaboratively compose instrumental roots music
- learn to play by ear as a means of memorizing and improvising
- perform with the artists in community concerts at the end of each session
Don Ross worked with guitar students at Arthur Voaden School in St. Thomas. The Creaking Tree String Quartet worked with string and guitar students at Woodstock District Collegiate Institute and Ingersoll Collegiate Institute. The Metis Fiddler Quartet worked with aboriginal students and string students at Lambeth Public School and Saunders Secondary as part of TVDSB’s first Indigenous Arts Festival. Jon Brooks presented songwriting workshops with various TVDSB high schools. Ticket revenue from the evening community concerts was given to the schools as seed money for the schools to fund their own Artists in the Schools programs in subsequent years. The artists, students and teachers all raved about this unique experience – the intensity, the interactivity and the value of this arts enrichment program. Home County is most appreciative of the funding provided by the government of Ontario and TD Bank Group which enabled us to offer these programs at no charge to selected schools.
Hospitality & Greening of the Festival
Home County is excited to be establishing a new partnership with the London Cross Cultural Learners Centre. New immigrants will gain experience in volunteerism in their new community. The festival can provide a local reference on their resumes. Their participation in the dishwashing program also teaches them about environmental practices. The festival is benefiting from the outsourcing of these operations, in terms of not taxing the capacity of our existing volunteer base. Honorariums provided to LCCLC for their greening and hospitality efforts will assist them in special programming beyond settlement services. LCCLC volunteers will be encouraged to enjoy the festival before and after their shifts to be exposed to Canadian arts and culture. LCCLC is hosting their first Community Cup, a soccer tournament with food and entertainment on August 1st at the Jesse Davidson Soccer Fields in Westmount. Home County is assisting with stage production and provision of tents and sound equipment.
Home County also loans out our stainless steel dishes and cutlery to various non-profit organizations throughout the year to enable them to have waste free events. Recently we loaned our sound system to Car Free Festivals to share resources and support new festivals in London. Contact [cathmcinnes@sympatico.ca] if you have an event that would benefit from these shared resources.
Youthsongs with Katherine Wheatley
Sponsored by Home County Folk Festival
In 2008 Home County Artistic Director Catherine McInnes worked with renowned singer/songwriter Katherine Wheatley to present a week-long Youthsongs progam at Tecumseh Public School. Students worte the songs collaboratively with their classmates, designed theor own CD covers, rehearsed, recorded and performed the songs for their school community. Each student received their own copy of the school songs. Listen to these great songs below.
JK/SK These Are The Things We Like To Do
In 2009 and 2010 Catherine & Katherine led five day summer camps for 11 – 15 year olds, just prior to the festival. The campers performed their songs on the children’s stage at the festival and rehearsed and recorded the songs. Listen to these campers songs:
Garden of Peace by Shuli Grosman-Gray
Appearances by Jessica Stewart & Madison Blackwell
Fly Away by Nicholas Tulk & Kelsey Dean
Baby Girl Cass by Summer Taylor
2011 Festival Sponsors
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