Sunday 24th and Monday 25th May 2015 saw the first ever ‘Raising the Bar’ event held at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (REP) for young deaf people with exceptional skills in music and dance. A huge nationwide competition was held to select participants. Six musicians and six dancers between 8 – 16 years old were chosen…
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Flute teaching
It is quite normal for me to repeat myself and then to see surprised reactions when people learn that I am a flute teacher. A ‘deaf’ flute teacher. No, wait for it – a profoundly deaf flute teacher actually.
Silent Night with Nadia Nadarajah
This song was first performed on Christmas Eve in 1818 in German (Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht) and is now translated into more than 300 different languages around the world with billions of hits on YouTube. I started wondering about the music working together with British Sign Language (BSL) in its highly stylised art form. As…
Residency and live performance for Dada Festival/Syndrome in Liverpool
DADA Performance Rough cut from davelynch on Vimeo. Residency and live performance for Dada festival / Syndrome in Liverpool REVIEW from www.artinliverpool.com Taking place at the Bluecoat, the space was set up with a large central screen, an electric piano keyboard to the left and a condenser microphone to the centre right. Off to the…
With artist Christopher Sacre
In 2010 Contemporary visual artist Christopher Sacre came up with an extraordinary idea when he created 2,000 babies in 22 days simply made from condoms and plaster. The liquid plaster is basically poured into the condom and when it dries, the latex is peeled and sawed off at the knotted end giving it a stable,…
The Spider Dance
Sometimes, the motions of Sign Language are incredibly musical. One evening in the pub, I asked Caroline Parker MBE to sign me a story about a Spider dancing on the web, catching a fly, devouring it and going to sleep. She did this without any script or preparation and it came out naturally on the video as I…
Music in Pictures
This sizzling summer term saw me leading workshops in Berkshire for Decibels on the topic of ‘Colour Music’. Many young people with and without disabilities looked into the relationships between music and art and how sounds from live music can be seen and interpreted into pictures and paintings, and vice versa. In this blog I…
Artist’s Residency: Hansel and Gretel (inc.video)
At the end of March Hansel and Gretel was the theme at Springwood Heath Primary School in Liverpool, giving pupils a week of creative twists and turns inspired by the Grimm Brothers’ famous fairy tale.
Music in the Early Years
In 2006 my mother Mary set up ‘Rhythmtots’, a weekly music group for young children in her area. I became involved in helping out and by the time my sons Harry and Benjamin arrived respectively, it became a special time for bonding with my boys through music. Mary’s classes attract tiny babies, big babies, toddlers, pre-schoolers,…
With artist Rubbena Aurangzeb-Tariq
Rubbena Aurangzeb-Tariq is a Deaf British born Muslim artist based in London. As a graduate from the prestigious St Martins College studying Fine Art and Goldsmiths University in London, she has been exhibiting her work since 1992 in America, Sweden, Paris, Canada, and the UK but to name a few places.