Fox Hollies 2013

Every year for the last 20 years I have been invited by Keith Youngson to lead the music for the Fox Hollies Summer Scheme. This is an amazing event consisting of a week working towards a self-made production from scratch with 70 to 90 young people, aged 9 up to 30+ but mostly secondary school age, who have moderate to severe special needs and mainstream school children.

Many of the young people are from Fox Hollies Special School and other Birmingham schools, and have severe or moderate special needs, while others are from mainstream and primary schools in the area, or are older people with special needs who may be part of the school drama group or who have been coming for years, or are members of Freefall Dance Company, (for people with learning disabilities) run by Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Lee Fisher who leads the dance for this week.
Some of the participants having been coming for as long as I have…

There are groups of dance, music, drama, art or digital art, and we all begin to work on an idea – this year it was based on a true story of a bloke who dug holes under his house. The band usually has 12 or 14 members in it.
We use the school instruments and I always bring a variety of my own stuff for them to use as well including things like accordions, banjos, harmonicas, strange sounds and anything new I can find.
We only have 4 days to build up a whole storyline, music and songs, dances with music, stage-set and projections, and then just one morning to rehearse it into a proper performance which is given to parents, carers and friends on the Friday afternoon.
It seems impossible at the beginning of the week, not least because there are so many people and some with very complex needs.
Everyone is encouraged to contribute ideas and solutions and as much freedom as possible is given to give it that holiday feel. The final performance always comes off somehow and this year was no exception.
In the band all the songs and music are composed by the members including me – this year several people went off and made songs up in the evenings and brought them back for us to work on which was brilliant.

This scheme only runs because there are many volunteers who help out each year. It is thoroughly exhausting and thoroughly enjoyable.
It is amazing because the people who take part seem to achieve so much in such a short time.