Giving Voice with The Left Hand Stair Ukes at Bar Loco – Lights, Camera, Campaign!

The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) is inviting people to enter photographs of their Giving Voice events since 12 October 2012 – and the twelve best images will be included in a 2014 calendar:

http://givingvoiceuk.org/lightscameracampaign/

Luckily, there are a couple of photo’s and videos of the Giving Voice “open stage” with the Left Hand Stair Ukes at Bar Loco, Newcastle upon Tyne on 23rd April.  Julie Carr, who joined us on ukulele, has already written about this event in her “Julie Giving Voice” blog:

A song, a speech and some Ukulele’s!

I trawled through the videos to try to find some suitable clips and it was all rather blurry. psychedelic and wobbly.  An excellent evocation of the evening – but calendar material?  Mmm . . . we will have to see what the judges think.

Giving Voice – Bar Loco Open Stage

This was a very interactive event!  First we performed the “Giving Voice”ukulele song.  This was very brave of The Left Hand Stair Ukes.  Most of them had not heard the song until earlier that evening and we only had time to run through it a couple of times.  I have performed the song at folk clubs, ukulele sessions and “open mics” but this was the first time with a band and also the first “multi-media” presentation.

The audience had been primed to listen carefully to the words – they knew in advance that the second time we played it there would be gaps for them to fill in.

I wrote this song in September 2011, when I was working for Gateshead Adult Speech & Language Service.  In the November, Julie Carr organised a Giving Voice “Bridging the Gap – Communication Chain”  event on the Tyne Millennium Bridge.  I was thrilled when Julie used the song as the soundtrack for her video of the event.

If you have not heard it before, and particularly if you do not know much about Speech and Language Therapy, have a listen and see if you can remember the missing words when it comes to the second video:

[vsw id=”qXE18A6WHmM” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

After the song, Julie gave a short presentation about the Giving Voice campaign.

Then the real fun started!  Many thanks to the volunteer from the audience who very kindly offered to record this participative extravaganza!

[vsw id=”bBklFOUf_rY” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

If you want to have a go at this song yourself, you can download the songsheet from this page:

Ukulele Song for Giving Voice

Many thanks to:

• Jule Carr – Julie Giving Voice
• Members of The Left Hand Stair Ukes (Andrew Wilkinson, Jazzy Lemon, Dennis Bell, David Newton and Albert Robinson)
• Bar Loco, Newcastle upon Tyne
• NELive Open Stage Compere Meghann Clancy, Sound-Guy Alex, Volunteer Video-Fella and the audience (particularly that man at the back!)