Hi Stewart,

I haven't had a chance to carefully read your whole prospectus, but I was very impressed with the way you outlined your workshops above. I have been to several workshops that seem to be much more about the artist's performance and knowledge than about getting people to sing. That is always disappointing to me.

I am mulling over putting together a workshop on "singing in the Irish tradition" for festivals and dance camps around the state. For these purposes, it needs to be 1 hour long, appropriate for a wide range of audience members, and very participatory. I hope to pull in some ideas from your work.

I do have some general workshop suggestions based on my experience teaching clogging workshops. Maybe you will find these helpful. They would be applicable to the festival or dance camp scene, where attendees are interested, often talented, but not expert in your field.

Handouts are great for most people, they feel they have gotten something to take home and it takes the pressure off of learning the whole thing in class. Hand them out at the beginning and people can glance through them while you are waiting for folks to gather. If you hand them out at the end, some might miss them because they have to leave early. Also, if you hand it out at the beginning, it sends an immediate message - you are organized and plan to be informative.

Have people introduce themselves and then start with something energetic that gets them moving and gets them working as a group.

Place the more challenging material closer to the front of the lesson, not at the end. Tell them this is tricky, but lets give it a try. This may seem counter intuitive, but at the beginning people still have energy and can learn better. Also, you can review this material at the end and give them a second shot at getting it down. I have had very positive response when I have done this.

Place fun and somewhat easy material at the end, so that they leave feeling successful.

Plan carefully, so that your workshop has a nice flow and you are not rushed.

I try to keep in mind that my job is to create an enjoyable experience with real content... not to make them into instant cloggers. If they truly want to get good at clogging, or singing for that matter, nothing but practice and hard work will do it. You cannot give them that, only the tools to work with.

Anyway, that is my 2 cents (or vastly more). It was fun to share these ideas, and I really appreciate the resource your workshop notes provide.

Claire