My students and I have been building musical communities over the past decade.
Consequently, there's a curious scene you can observe in Poynton, Cheshire and its surrounding areas..
Grown adults walk the streets with guitars, ukuleles and banjos strapped to their backs - music stand in hand - heading for parish rooms, scout huts, community halls, looking eager. Obviously on their way to do something fruitful and fun.
Here's the quick story...
It starts on a drab Monday evening - 7th January 2013 - in a cleared office room in Chorlton, Manchester. This is where I chose to run my very first group guitar class for adults. Two days later, I did the same in Poynton, Cheshire, running both 10 week courses in tandem, in both locations.
I was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm to come together to learn and play in groups and how quickly people got to know each other. It was the beginning of a community - a musical one.
Some were in their 20s, most were over 40, some were in their 80s. Music had bridged the age-gap right away!
As time went on, I noticed Poynton out-performed Chorlton, so I re-focussed my efforts there, adding more and more group courses.
In 2014, I founded Poynton Music School. By now, I was running a fair number of sessions in 3 different instruments: guitar, banjo and ukulele.
The music school ran for over 5 years until closing at the beginning of the covid pandemic in 2020. During that time, my students and I built up a strong musical community in the area which had already divided and multiplied into various jam sessions and groups. These are people who had never played before or were strictly living room musicians!
Closing seemed quite dramatic but I knew it was the end of a room and a name, but not the end of a mission!
During the covid-era of 2020-2022, I turned to online community building.
Running group courses via zoom, I reached people across the country and overseas. This included a weekly Thursday night 'play-along' jam session - attracting up to 40 participants each week.
Post-covid, the local musical community continues to grow with myself back running face-to-face group sessions again.
Today, my current and former students are running their own jam sessions, duos, trios, quartets as well as playing with others at folk clubs, open mics and meet-ups. And my own workshops are bringing people together, giving some the confidence to join other sessions or even perform in public.
There's a strong correlation between my individual lessons and my group workshops.
1-to-1 students often join my group sessions and likewise, my workshop students often book private lessons - all helping to build up a community which makes music a part of its daily life.
I should add that the above story concerns exclusively adult learners but my 1-to-1 lessons are open to all ages; children and adults alike.
I offer 1-to-1 lessons in:
Acoustic Guitar | Classical Guitar | Electric Guitar | 5 String Banjo | Ukulele
Details on my upcoming group sessions can be found here.
Please take a look around the website, see what I have to offer and I hope you too will join this musical community!