Specialist Practice in Context Module 27/09/2018

Specialist Practice in Context is a module in my 3rd year of academic study. It is all about contextualising our work in the real world of working as a musician. My project takes on the form of a self directed arts project, However, this lacks the "context" so much of my work this week has been planning to work the project in to one.

My actual musical project is a set of neo-classical pieces inspired by various sites and themes from the Island of Jersey including the castles, the maritime activity, historic places and folklore and is in the early stages of development, i.e. I have about 10 minutes of draft musical material based on some of these ideas which I intend to craft into more detailed specific ideas as the project gains a more definitive direction. This flexibility is important right now as in order to give the project some "context" as the module requires, it'd be very beneficial to liaise with an organisation on the project to see the project through to an end goal e.g. a performance or premiere of the music and naturally this might not always be possible, hence my planning:

Since I started work on the music it had always been written with the idea of places in jersey in mind hence my first point of contact is going to be to Jersey Heritage to see if they have any interest in using the project in any number of the historic sites they manage, or if they would be interested in allowing me to premiere or exhibit the work in one of said places.

If this is unsuccessful then I plan to contact several of the art galleries in the island to have similar discussions and if I am unsuccessful with that, contact Jersey Tourism who own a number of other significant places of interest on the island.

All of that could collectively be considered Plan A, or maybe A1 A2 and A3, because they are somewhat different plans.

Plan B is significantly different though, since many of the themes that I have considered around Jersey are also present and true to Cornwall, (my situation of study), I plan on adapting the project to fit similar themes in Cornwall. The draft material I have would be easy enough to adapt. I already have several ideas in mind for places which I would be interested to approach including the National Maritime Museum, Pendennis Castle, Trebah Gardens and the visitor centres of the RNLI stations around Cornwall.

Plan C is if I can not find anywhere with any connection to the themes of my music to play it. This would be to adapt the music to a folk style arrangement such that I can solo perform it around at open mics and possibly some arranged concerts as a means to advertise my project, plan C would also include outreaching to local radio stations about the project.

In an Ideal world, I'd like to have the music installed or premiered in one of the Jersey Heritage sites, and knowing which it would be would mean I could shift the weighting of the project to being about such place.