At a recent B Side retrospective on the work of Joe Stevens I happened to meet up with David Oates who did a great sound art project with our young people as part of the cultural Olympiad. Hear they are:

Mumjum has written and recorded a new track with a huge thank you to Steve Garden who played guitar on the track and acted as an additional set of ears during the mixing process.

The track is called Saturday Night and a percentage of the profits will go towards supporting community music in the Weymouth and Portland area.

Portland Rocks will be launching community music lessons in September, a big thank you to those who have already filled out our online survey here

Learning to play music is a fantastic thing to do and here and  here are just some of the reasons why.

I’m sure we all have our favourite summer music that we just have to listen to when the weather is good. For me it just has to be the album ‘Rumours’ by Fleetwood Mac as it has been with me since my teenage years and will always remind me of long summer days, it just has that feel.

What is your favourite summer album or track?

Declining numbers of students are taking the arts at GCSE. This week, after an online petition achieved over 100,000 signatures the issue was debated in parliament. Read about the debate here

If only I’d known this when I was growing up I would have started playing jazz earlier. I assume jersey cows enjoy jazz though they might prefer big band swing!

We regard this as a very important piece of work to assess the musical needs of the Weymouth and Portland community. As a result of this survey we will target work where a need is demonstrated and try to offer what the community have requested.

Please fill in the survey here

The survey will keep being posted across the summer and new music strands for development will begin in September to coincide with the start of the new educational year.

Many thanks for taking the time to help us.

Portland Rocks would like to offer music tuition on a range of instruments across the Weymouth and Portland area at affordable prices to both adults and children. In addition we would like to offer opportunities for group music making. The lessons/activities would take place outside school hours, late afternoon, early evening at a venue or venues to be decided.

In order for us to assess the likely demand please take time to fill in our survey (takes just a few minutes). We would like to collect some basic information such as which instrument you would like to play, what you think is a reasonable cost and anything in particular you feel we should offer that is not offered locally. We also offer you the chance to leave contact details so we can keep you up to date with developments.

The survey can be found here. Thank you for your time.

Though we have been quiet for a while things are still happening including the download label which is now up and running.

There will be an announcement regarding future developments soon.

The English Baccalaureate, or Ebacc, is a standard which maintains that English, maths, science, a language and a humanity define a good education. The exclusion of art, music, drama and other expressive subjects is limiting, short sighted and cruel. Creativity must be at the heart of our schools.

Please sign  the petition here