Heather helping music to ‘Grow’
GROW MUSIC MAKING A BIG IMPRESSION AT MOSNEY CENTRE
WHEN Heather Oakes decided to bring some of the instruments from her Grow Music School out to Mosney to give the children there the opportunity to experiment and try them out, she could never had anticipated the response she received.
After hearing about a new Creative Arts Group at Mosney through a Facebook group, Heather decided to volunteer her time and enlisted the help of some of the other teachers from Grow Music to join her.
Founded in 2016, Grow Music was ‘ born out of necessity’ according to Heather, who is originally from California.
After teaching violin for many years, she decided to start her own school, enlisting a group of like minded music teachers to provide classes to both children and adults in various different instruments, both in groups and individually.
‘I wasn’t getting enough hours where I was working before so essentially the school was born out of necessity,’ said Heather. ‘I wasn’t getting enough hours where I was working before so I decided to start my own classes.
She enlisted a number of minded musicians who were willing to think outside the box and take a chance on something new and creative and from the outset there was a huge interest with Grow Music classes running in both Dundalk and Drogheda twice a week.
‘I was on a Facebook page set up to help refugees and realised Mosney was our closest centre. Someone had just set up a creative arts for Mosney group and I joined that and as a result I offered to bring in some of the instruments for a day to let the children have a go and try them out,’ explained Heather.
‘It was just me and I brought a couple of instruments the first week, a guitar, two violins, a tin whistle and a keyboard. The kids had a ball and were asking if they could keep the instruments. I said I’m sorry I have to bring them back and that’s when I had the idea to try and gather some instruments to leave there permanently.’
As a result, Heather ran the recent Grow Music recital in aid of instruments for children in Direct Provision at Mosney.
She returned to Mosney a couple of weeks later with even more instruments this time after a number of the student rentals were returned and the session was just as successful as the first.
‘ The younger kids were so keen to try everything out and the older kids all seemed to gravitate towards the violin,’ said Heather. ‘ There was a woman there who said she was a music teach, I think she played the accordian and the keyboard, and she said she’d be willing to teach the kids, and there was another guy there who brought in what I think is a Kurdish instrument, called a Saz. It looked a little bit like a bazookie, it was fantastic. There were about fifty or sixty kids there in total.’
Heather said the success of these sessions has made her determined to continue them and to provide some musical instruments which can be donated to the centre so there is a permanent stock for the children to practice on.
‘We are trying to get a stock of musical instruments in there so that we don’t have to keep bringing them in every Sunday,’ she explained. ‘ We are hoping that people might be generous enough to donate any unwanted instruments for the project.’
To make a donation, see www.growmusic.ie or visit the school’s facebook page Grow Music.
Grow Music lessons will return after the summer break in September at Ballymakenny College every Wednesday and and Thursday.