*Image used with permission from Breakfast Club*

The Breakfast Club X The Magpie Project

The pandemic had a devastating impact on the lives of many, especially the Magpie Project’s community of vulnerable mums and young children living in temporary or insecure housing.

This commission was intended as an artistic and therapeutic intervention on lockdown life. Over five weeks the Breakfast Club quartet and mums from The Magpie Project worked together in a series of live sessions. The project asked the group to re-hear their environments and find new ways of being in dialogue with the sounds around them through play, experimentation and joyful sound making. Through this empowering practice the group expanded their relationship with themselves, others and environment.

The Breakfast Club produced sonic postcards and image/text-based scores for listening/soundwalks which were shared via Instagram and SoundCloud as part of the DISRUPT festival. Sonic postcards included instrumental improvisations, spoken word, field recordings and captured moments of the process working with the Magpie Project.

the commission

During lockdown the Magpie community dispersed into many types of home or accommodation. Not all of it pleasant. For a group that ran on baby smiles, hugs, and shared tea, cake and space - it was a difficult time. With the Breakfast Club we wanted to explore how to be together when we were apart,, and how to encourage mums and minis out of their rooms and in to the local parks and streets.

Over 5 sessions on Zoom Magpie mums and minis worked with members of the Breakfast Club quartet to explore what brought them joy, comfort and serenity. We took walks, creating maps of our journeys and remembered and imagined places that we liked to go, sounds that we heard and words that brought us comfort. We sang songs and danced together, created music and movements and shared our experiences, feelings and reflections. We played instruments that we made or found to create improvised soundscapes. We worked with materials including chalk, stones and bells.

We prioritised openness and a readiness to bring questions and find answers together. We found ways of working which allowed us to overcome the limitations of the format (Zoom) through creativity and improvisation.

We were struck by the power and fragility of the connections we made. Despite the intermittent nature of our digital connection, we found an intimate and imagined space of belonging - we found each other through listening, sharing and making. Inside Out Orchestra was a space for us to voice, share and collectively explore our multifaceted/whole selves, as people first, but also women, mothers, children, artists, cooks, caretakers, friends, colleagues, improvisers, explorers.

The materials we share here are imprints or artefacts and we invite you to see it as embedded in a context, time, and set of relationships. As glimpses of our intimate creative process, love letters between a family/community forced to be apart, traces of journeys that we went on together, snapshots of a period of time which has already passed.

Part 1

Walking

Walking as a means of connecting and exploring ourselves and our surroundings.

Walking as a means of staying active and taking care of ourselves and our families.

Who are we?
Where are we?
How do we live our day to day lives?
How can we make an artistic imprint of that?
How do we connect to our inner world?
How do we notice things that we relate to?
How do we connect as a group?

We learned this song from Rhia (Breakfast Club) who sang it as a child in Australia. We sang and played instruments, improvising soundscapes to accompany the song. Singing and playing together in this way brought up memories and reminded us of places we had been and the sounds we had heard there.

Lyrics:

We are going, heaven knows where we are going, but we know within
We will get there, heaven knows how we will get there, but we know we will
Woyaya

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Part 2

Journeys

Imagining travelling further; from ourselves to a walk to a journey;

stretching out from where we are.

                        Where are we going?
                        Where do we want to be?
                        How do we get there?
                        Who is around to support you in your journey?
                        How do we share our journeys and our experiences?
                        How do we artistically explore and express our journeys?

This is a sonic response to a score of Mama M’s journey in the form of a music improvisation. Each week we shared materials that helped us to express our individual journeys both through words but also through drawing with pen and chalk. We improvised without aiming for a specific output, allowing individual and collective sounds to merge.

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Part 3

serenity place

Imagining our serenity place, letting our bodies and minds relax into this space.

Feeling connected across time and space

                        Where do we find peace?
                        Where do we find comfort?
                        Where do we go when looking for peace, comfort and nurture?
                        Who are we with? Who brings us joy?

This is a new piece of music that we composed together over several sessions. The recording you can hear is an instrumental version created by Breakfast Club and includes a poem written by Mama P. The melodies emerged from a vocal improvisation we did as a group, following one mini’s journey score. As a group we also created lyrics for this melody. We wanted to sing about some of the places that brought us comfort and peace. This song expresses feelings that are important to all of us, such as being outside in nature, holding our loved ones, being together with our families, feeling calm and loved.

Lyrics:

Feel the sun on my cheeks
Listening to the waves
Serenity place

Holding you in my arms
Rocking you to sleep
Being at peace

Poem:

As I take a walk in the lap of nature
The abundant joy
Overwhelms my heart
The love so pure and mature
Just to hear singing birds
Beautiful and smart

Rejoice my soul, for it’s the bright day
As these sparkly beams that you are hugged
All the sorrows have now faded away
Knowing that you are unconditionally loved
Knowing that you are unconditionally loved

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Part 4

Talismans

Inhabiting our serenity places; sounding out to each other and to the world; imprinting our thoughts and feelings on stones and other objects

                        What do we say to ourselves when travelling to those places?
                        How do we physicalising these feelings of nurture, comfort and serenity?
                        Which objects are we bringing or finding in those places?
                        How do we decorate those places?
                        How do all these places sound and vibrate together?
                        How do we imprint our thoughts and feelings on an object?

This piece consists of field recordings, fragments of group improvisations, conversations and poems pieced together with a short film of a place of serenity, as an attempt to sound out to each other and share with the world a collective talisman.

Download film here: Download

This piece consists of recordings of Mama S’s bell playing, accompanied by her mini, layered over with a version of a vocal piece inspired by a Meredith Monk score. For us, this piece was about sounding out, finding resonance and a sense of connection to sound and to each other.

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ABOUT THE COLLABORATORS

Breakfast Club is a quartet of musicians - Detta Danford and Evi Nakou (flutes), Rhia Parker (recorders/voice) and Natasha Zielazinski (cello), formed as an ensemble to explore an eclectic mix of repertoire- folk, experimental, and contemporary composition. A driving motivation within their practice is a curiosity about the female experience.

The Magpie Project is a charity based in east London which supports women with children under 5 who are living in temporary or insecure housing. It offers a mix of social, emotional, and practical support to address the crises they find themselves in and connects families to creative professionals to provide opportunities for story-telling and creativity.