Intergernational concert preparation underway

I met with Suzanne and Kara, the conductors of the Rotokauri Tuis (childrens' choir) on Tuesday, and we mapped out the concert which will be performed on Friday February 26th. Both choirs will sing together for six songs, and then each choir will perform two sets of songs. The Tuis will do one set of songs with their whole choir and another set with a smaller group of the senior singers, who are working on singing in parts.

Yesterday (Thursday October 22nd) I told the Glee Club about the plans for the concert. I taught them the chorus of the Kiwi Kids' Theme song, I gave them the 'When I'm 64' lyrics to work on rewriting. The Tuis will sing the original version of the song, the Glee Club will sing their version of the song. I gave Glee Club the Tui's new words to the ABBA song Honey Honey, which has turned it into a love of the product, very cleverly.

I sent an email to the Garden's Festival organiser about date, time and venue for the concert. It appears that we will have the venue we want, the Pavilion, an inside venue where the Glee Club will be able to sit for most (for some) or all (for some) of the concert. The organiser had envisaged the concert being held outside on a lawn, and that would have required amplification, chairs, etc. Watch this space, I am still thinking about how we might merge our concepts.

I have put a post on the AIRS project, a request for help about how to record this event in relation to the outcomes for both sets of participants for this process. AIRS stands for Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing. It is an exciting concept, but doesn't appear to be very active as yet. I have also joined an Ethnographic research group here in the School of Education, and will be asking them for their learned opinions as well. Furthermore I will be talking to my colleague Professor Peggy Koopman-Boyden who has been a gerontologist for some decades, and picking her brains.

In the meantime, I go next Tuesday to work vocally with the senior singers at Rotokauri (ages 10 & 11) (a whole new way of using senior!!)and start talking with them about the project. I will continue to work with Glee Club, which now has 31 singers!!!

A Summary of my current position

Today, during a programme called 'Research Bites' I presented my current position after all of the discoveries and discussion of the past two weeks. I shared the findings out of the Singing and Health report from the Sidney de Haan Centre, which reflected much of my own findings, from open-ended-question surveys that I have been using with my groups up until now.

I now have three sets of data that I will be collecting.

Data 1
I am now in the position of getting 'critical mass' with thirteen groups of people with participants over age 60 filling out the following questionnaire between now and the end of the year, potentially up to 200 people.

1. How does singing in *** influence your health?
2. How does singing in *** influence your sense of wellbeing?
3. How does singing in *** influence your quality of life?

Data 2
I have collected a second set of blood pressure data from the Hilda Ross Glee Club and this will grow into a longditudinal set of data with individual people's data as well as the collective data.

Data 3
I am working in the intergenerational setting with the Glee Club and the Rotokairu Tuis for a concert in the Hamilton Gardens Summer Festival in February 2010. Having made links with the AIRS project I will be looking at research guidance from the intergenerational group there, along with the Sidney de Haan centre faculty. This project starts in mid September.