This blog will present the progress of a collaborative project that I will be conducting as part of my MUS634 module at University. The project requires me to partake in Collaborative and Contextual practices. This means that I have to collaborate with somebody outside of the music degree on a project and consider where the project fits contextually. The rest of this blog will trace this collaboration’s journey from the initial proposal to the finished result.
When I was originally introduced to this task, I had two main collaborative ideas in mind. The first was to work with my father on creating a music video for an original song. My father has directed, filmed and edited music videos for Blaze Bayley, former lead singer of Iron maiden for many years. He is skilled within this field and can work under pressure due to the high demand of producing music videos for an internationally famous artist. Below is a video that my father produced.
My second idea was to work with Plymouth Music Zone (PMZ). PMZ is a community music charity that use the power of music to bring people together (Plymouthmusiczone.org.uk, 2019). The charity runs music workshops for vulnerable people such as the elderly or disabled. I assist in the Baton Beats sessions that are ran by Rob Tilsley. Baton Beats is an African drumming workshop. As I am extremely passionate with the work that PMZ do and have developed a good working relationship with Rob, I decided that this would also be a suitable collaboration.
Obviously, both collaborations excite me however I can only use one for this project. In order to decide which collaboration to choose, I weighed up the pros and cons of each. Below are the pros and cons of collaborating with my father on a music video.
Below are the pros and cons of collaborating with Rob from PMZ.
Through weighing up the pros and cons, it was evident that working with Rob on a project for PMZ would be the better option. Although I am not as familiar with Rob, we are both musicians so our collaboration would be strong. Furthermore, we are both based in Plymouth meaning meeting up to discuss the project should be relatively easy. I also do not want this project to feel selfish and so by working with Rob on a workshop for vulnerable people within the community, it allows me to benefit other people. The project will also have natural links to important contextual practices such as safeguarding. Overall, collaborating with Rob feels much more feasible as well as meaningful.
My next step is to contact my potential collaborator, Rob, and discuss whether he would be interested in working on this project with me.
Reference List
Bayley, B. (2019). BLAZE BAYLEY : Eagle Spirit (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO). YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72qeK22YfmM [Accessed 7 Jan. 2020].
Plymouthmusiczone.org.uk. (2019). Plymouth Music Zone – We bring people together to transform lives through the power of music…. [online] Available at: https://plymouthmusiczone.org.uk/ [Accessed 7 Feb. 2020].
Emily Pembridge MUS634 