Park Community School - Lyric Workshops

This week I was lucky enough to be invited back to the lovely Park Community School in Havant for a whole day of assemblies and lyrics workshops. This was my second visit to the school and everyone was so warm and welcoming, it was a brilliant day!

I started out the morning with back to back assemblies to the whole of Year 8 and Year 9 where I performed two songs from “The Songs You’ve Never Heard” and spoke to the audience about my books and music. It was so nice to be able to share live songs with the students and answer all their thoughtful questions.

After assembly, was my first lyric workshop with around 20 students in Year 8. This was my first time hosting a creative writing activity and I was so pleased to see everyone getting so involved with the tasks! We talked about multiple lyric writing techniques and all came up with song title ideas followed by four lines of original lyrics. The results were varied and brilliant, and some people even went on to expand their ideas after the session!

Later in the afternoon I gave my third and final assembly talk with Year 7 (who asked the most questions and grooved the hardest!!), followed by another lyric workshop, this time with a selected group of Year 7s. This was such a great and friendly discussion about music and songwriting and I loved hearing all the results!

I finished up my day chatting to a group of Year 11s in the library and then joined the after school book quiz where our team stormed ahead only to end up losing (sorry guys lol!)… Everyone was so funny and engaged, it was amazing to meet so many students, sign books, pose for selfies and chat about all sorts of different topics!

Thank you so much to Park’s wonderful librarian Ann-Marie for arranging the event and supporting me on the day - I’ve heard some lovely feedback from the students and teachers and I hope we’ll all get to do it again soon!

Music Youth Group Visit

This week I visited The Stacey Centre community hall in Portsmouth to give a talk to the after school music youth group that meets there weekly.

My lovely friend Gareth is a teacher for the group and it was amazing to meet so many lively, talented young people who love music and are already out busking and earning from their talent at age 16!

I gave a talk all about songwriting camps and my experiences of travelling the world and collaborating with other musicians. I also got to talk about music libraries, PRS and investing in recording equipment - I really hope the teens got something out of it, and it was great to chat with them and answer their questions.

Thanks so much for having me, it was a great evening! :)

Park Community School Visit

Last week I visited Park Community School in Havant to give a talk and run a drama workshop. The event was set up by the school’s wonderful librarian Ann-Marie who is incredibly passionate about encouraging new readers and wanted an event that mixed elements of English, Music, Drama and Careers to cover multiple bases in the curriculum.

I started out with a talk to 150 students in the school’s gorgeous theatre space - this is the biggest group I’ve ever given a talk to and I was pretty nervous, but the students were so lovely and engaged that I had nothing to worry about! It was brilliant to talk to them about The Songs You’ve Never Heard and even perform ‘And What?’ and ‘Domino Effect’ live - everyone clapped and danced along!

(I am waiting for permission to post “in action” photos, but here was the theatre space that was full up!)

After the talk was a Q&A session where I was asked so many questions that we actually missed the end of lesson bell! So many students got involved, asking such thoughtful and intelligent questions and I absolutely loved chatting to them all.

After that was a book signing and photographs, followed by a drama workshop with a smaller group. We had some brilliant improvised scenes including some super bubbly Alana’s and dramatic Caspar’s! I also got to hear a rendition of “You Will Be Found” from Dear Evan Hansen that the group had been working on which was fantastic.

Thank you so much for having me and for such an enjoyable visit - everyone’s enthusiasm for Songs was so lovely and I really hope you will all enjoy reading the full story!

Burgess Hill Girls - School Visit

Last week, Ellie and I attended Burgess Hill Girls for an afternoon of The Songs You’ve Never Heard talks and workshops centred around anti-bullying and female empowerment.

We started with a careers talk in the library to a group of around 20 girls who were all interested in writing and music. It was so lovely to chat to them about the process of publishing a musical book and they asked us brilliant questions!

After this session, we took a workshop with the whole of Year 9, splitting them into lyric games with Ellie and a drama task with me. It was great to see everyone performing as Meg and Caspar, and we finished up on a big group singalong of And What? - the girls picked up the song amazingly and they even had some synchronised dance moves!

We ended the day with an assembly in front of Year 9, Year 10 and Year 11 where we gave a talk about our creative work as women in the music industry. Burgess Hill wanted us to share the message of women empowering each other and I hope we were able to bring some inspiration with our real life stories and experiences.

The visit was particularly special because we were also joined by a few sixth formers who were in our very first reading group of Songs way back in 2019! Thank you Burgess Hills for having us and for being a huge support on our journey to publication! And a huge thank you for also sharing our visit with Sussex Press!

The Theatre Workshop Visit

In October, Ellie and I took a visit to The Theatre Workshop in Brighton - a musical theatre school that helps develop amazing young singers, dancers and actors!

We held an hour workshop with four separate classes throughout the day and saw around 80 students or so in total. The first task was to create a short scene using a handful of characters from Songs and it was absolutely amazing to see what the students came up with! We had some brilliant dramatic Mums, egotistical Caspars and adorkable Mattys. We even had some really emotional friendship scenes between Meg and Alana which was so lovely to watch. Some students hadn’t read the book yet, but were still able to bring the characters and scenes completely to life!

After that we ran through “One Day At A Time” in a group and even played some song lyric games which was so much fun. Here’s a shot of me leading the singing group…!

Thank you so much to the Theatre Workshop for having us, we really hope the students enjoyed the workshop and the book and look forward to doing more in the future!

Portchester School Visit

On the launch day for The Songs You’ve Never Heard I visited Portchester School to give a presentation to a lovely class of Year 9 students. They were all partway through reading the book and one girl had even finished the whole story!

We had a great class discussion about themes in the book such as defining success and body image in the media. I also read part of Chapter 26 where Meg and Alana write ‘Domino Effect’ then played them the real life song! There were a lot of musicians in the group and it was great to chat about what gets us into a creative headspace.

Thank you so much to my friend Tom for having me and for promoting the book all over the school - being able to sign student copies and answer questions for the school newsletter was my first real “omg I’m an author!” moment - hope to come back again in the new term!

Priory School Visit

At the end of May, my good friend Chris Ricketts invited me to Priory School to give four presentations about The Songs You’ve Never Heard to his Music and English students. This is the first time I’ve been in an actual real life school in, oh let’s just say, 20 years or so… Needless to say I was VERY VERY NERVOUS!!

However, the students were so lovely and welcoming so I had nothing to worry about! I spoke to Year 8, Year 9, Year 10 and another Year 8 class, and even performed And What? and Firework Display live and acoustic to each class! This was the first time I had performed these songs in front of an audience and it was amazing to share them and get the student’s reactions. Some of them were even singing along with me by the final chorus!

As well as doing a book reading, I talked a lot about music and my songwriting background and got everyone to share their Top 3 Current Favourite songs with me. Priory School has IMPECCABLE taste! I had plenty of musical questions after each class from budding songwriters, and one student was very impressed I loved Orla Gartland as much as she did!

It has been such a confidence boost to start my journey with school visits and by the fourth presentation, I was definitely on a roll! Thanks so much for having me Chris and for being my guitarist for the morning. Hopefully the first of many successful book events to come! :)