Following on from the success of the Glastonbury Community Piano in Abbey Mews Arcade and the Glastonbury Community Guitars provided by Glastonbury’s Music Shop, comes a new community project called Play It Forwards which has an office above the music shop.
Our charitable aim is to provide musical instruments, mentoring and education, to help people to express creative ideas and to perform.
Realistically, we want to start small so we can test concepts and ideas and make the project as fun and inclusive as possible. Music is an emotive language that transcends class, nationality and predates the spoken word.
We are starting by teaching Glastonbury’s ‘benchers’ to play ukuleles to enable them to make money from busking and to entertain tourists. If the project is successful we will be looking to help people with long term social differences including autism, drug addiction, mental illness and urban street dwellers.
As our first project we will provide a dozen bright yellow ABS plastic Glastonbury Community Ukuleles which have been playfully dubbed ‘The Ukes Of Hazard’.
Really, the advantage of using plastic instruments is, they can be left out on the street in all weathers. If they can’t be returned to the music shop they are less likely to get damaged if someone doesn’t have shelter.
Don’t go away! We need your help. We are asking for donations to cover the initial cost of the instruments, the cost of maintenance and replacement strings and tutors. We want the project to benefit local music teachers by paying them to teach simple upbeat songs.
A new ukulele costs £36 plus decals. A replacement string costs £1.30 plus fitting. A tutor costs £18 per lesson plus any printed materials. Admin costs are ongoing and include the office, sundries and this website.
Play It Forwards 