Workshops & Education
Workshops
Tongues of Fire offer music workshops in street bands and improvisation. From this core we can expand into creating processions or outdoor events and include activities like lantern making, giant images, costume, performance,history, folklore and mythology. Projects can also be placed in wider context of landscape, archaeology, history, myth, drama and that dread word ‘heritage’. The music workshops create a strong rhythmic band, confident in performing out of doors. Key elements are learning and playing by ear, group playing and group improvisation with some written music, the workshops can adapt to the whole range of music reading abilities. These workshops are excellent ways of building confidence in improvisation, learning about different musical traditions and building confidence.
Education Projects
The band has considerable experience in running education projects.
Harry Dawes was for several years Artist in Resisidence at The Ark, the award winning arts project for people with learning disabilities. He also teaches recording technology, technical theatre and performance at Stratford College, and is a qualified TEFL teacher.
Pete McPhail has also worked at The Ark, and pioneered the use of the Soundbeam, for which he has just written a manual. He also helps runs the Soundabout musical education project.
Dan Fox is a highly experienced music tutor. He recently contributed to The Community Music Handbook , running workshops for the books launchat Youth Action Zones around the country. He runs Hands on Rhythm, working on percussion projects throughout the North. He also regularly works for More Music in Morecome, Welfare State International and The Sage, Gateshead.
Julian Faultless and Simon Prince are peripatetic music teachers for Oxford and Huddersfield music services respectively.
Tim Hill has lead improvisation, vocal, roots music and street band workshops for WOMAD, Sidmouth Folk Festival, Traditional Arts Projects, Hands on Music, York Early Music Centre and Welfare State International. He has also regularly worked for Avon Valley, Reading, Bucks, Islington Councils. He leads the Albion Horns, a community street band based in Somerset funded by Folk South West.
The Procession
Processions are an important part of seasonal and civic celebrations, witness the strong Carnival traditions around the world. In Britain Rough Music processions were an important communal protest form, the Wild Hunt is a powerful West Country mythic image, processions with bands, dancing, images and giants marked the ritual year and Carnival flourishes in Somerset and Devon towns.
Tongues of Fire are working on procession ideas for performances. Several members of the band have long experience with processions and outdoor performance. Dan Fox has been musical Director on the Ulverston Lantern Festival Finale for several years and has been a key member of Welfare State International and Doegtroup, two of the worlds finest outdoor theatre companies in the world. Harry Dawes and Simon Prince have worked with IOU theatre company, and Harry was part of the award winning Lee and Dawes sound theatre group. Tim Hill has also worked for WSI for several years on processional projects, on the Lantern Festival and created feasts for their ‘Rites of Passage’ events.
Our processions have at their heart, street music and theatre, seasonal celebrations, mummers and mystery plays, a whirlwind from the English dreamtime, a British day of the dead; a powerful, colourful, elemental procession with wild music, strong simple shapes, provocative and evocative characters and strange devices.
