Singing Spaces CIC was founded by Shelagh McKay Jones, an award-winning Scottish singer songwriter (Inverclyde's Scottish Folk & Roots Festival 2014 and Celtic Connections' Danny Kyle Open Stage 2015). Shelagh sees songwriting as a vital cultural ingredient in developing and strengthening communities. Her long-term vision is to bring songwriting back to the hearts of towns and rural communities throughout Scotland.
"Connect-Create-Regenerate" is a Low-Access to Arts Project which will be delivered by Shelagh.
Regeneration can be defined as creating the conditions for life to flourish and can therefore be brought about through writing, songwriting and gig theatre which are excellent vehicles for people to tell their stories both individually and collaboratively. Telling your story is a vital part of developing emotional resilience.
Musicians Union identifies women, carers and people of different races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders and sexual orientations as having low access to musical opportunities.
Shelagh plans to target the following low-access groups within the target community of Greenock Town Centre and East Central Greenock the most deprived area of Scotland.
Safe Harbour community:
• Largely, but not exclusively, women, and often carers, deemed by statutory services to have treatment-resistant mental health issues.
Your Voice & Parklea Branching Out communities:
• People with physical and/or learning disabilities.
• People with chronic illness, both visible and invisible.
• New Scots
People with other protected characteristics will be actively encouraged and catered for within the above groups by providing safe and welcoming environments.
Week 1 – contacting and assessing the needs of participants, including whether they will require a carer to always be present with them for personal needs, emotional support, to act as a scribe or a prompt, and whether they will need any adaptations, e.g. recordable sound buttons.
Weeks 2-5 – delivering weekly participant-led socially engaged writing, songwriting and gig theatre workshops, with an underlying mindful singing therapy running through, to the four different low-access groups.
Weeks 6 & 7 – break to give participants time to reflect. This also makes it easier for participants to fit the workshops around other aspects of their lives. During this period Shelagh would also offer 1-2-1 support to any participants that would like to have this opportunity.
Week 8-11 – continuing with the above workshops but with a focus on performance for those that would like to perform their work. Shelagh would be facilitating & enabling the groups in curating, producing, and directing so everyone will be able to be involved in some way that works for them.
Week 12 – curating, producing and delivering a combined exhibition and performance of work at the end of the project.
Throughout the project Shelagh would also be creating her own works responding to themes of arts accessibility in response to participants work. This would also be shared in the combined exhibition and performance of work at the end of the project.
Participants would not only develop skills in writing, songwriting and performance, but also self-awareness, self-confidence, interpersonal skills and insight into their own feelings and those of others as they create or reimagine work together.
The project would bring people together in collaborative processes where cultural diversity is celebrated and participants would become invested in each other’s successes.
Ultimately, they will be part of something bigger than themselves – the collective creative output of the project – developing a sense of community and belonging, and a sense of collective pride in their community.
Their lives both individually and collectively will flourish.
Shelagh will engage with the target groups in different ways according to the needs of individual participants which will be continually reassessed throughout the project.
As a former support for learning teacher and Safe Harbour client, and current lived experience expert and Ehlers-Danlos Support UK invisible illness area coordinator, Shelagh is confident that offering a mix of Support and Empowerment, Collaborative Design and Artist-Led Vision to all groups according to individual need would be the most appropriate way forward.
With all groups Shelagh would create an environment where everyone feels able to contribute and where social histories are explored in positive ways, learning about each other and creating work individually or collaboratively according to individual participant needs.