Teaching Pack published for ‘Compost! The (mini-)Musical’

To mark Compost Awareness Week next week, I am launching the long-awaited Teaching Pack for ‘Compost! The (mini-)Musical‘, my BigBuzz eco-musical, which can be easily learned and performed -  indoors or out – by children and adults alike.

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Listen to an excerpt

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York Brownies go green!

Brownies in their Compostable Crowns

You can find out more about Compost! The (mini-)Musical, and my other BigBuzz eco-musicals at my website: http://www.thebigbuzz.biz/eco-musicals.html

Helmsley Green Day

The sun shone on Helmsley in North Yorkshire yesterday for the Helmsley Green Day, held at Helmsley Walled Garden. Well, it shone nearly all the day. It started raining just as we were about to finish learning Compost! The (mini-)Musical, so we retired to the Beer Tent, and performed to an enthusiastic crowd of drinkers there.

Visitors to the Green Day learned my eco-musical from scratch in 30 minutes

The performers had started learning my eco-musical just 30 minutes beforehand. They were the second Compost Crew I had trained that afternoon. The first Crew had learned the musical and performed it outdoors earlier that afternoon. (And one of them came back to join in this second performance!)

The Walled Garden is a beautiful garden in a beautiful location. Helmsley Castle looked down on us as we sang and drummed through our musical.

Helmsley Walled Garden

There was lots going on at the Green Day, including story-telling from Nettlefoot Kate, and shoe-selling from my friend Terry, who runs Roosters .

Storytelling from Nettlefoot Kate at Helmsley Green Day, 16 August 2008.

Congratulations to all those who came along and learned Compost! in such a short time, and then performed it with such gusto! It was great to see grandparents learning and performing with their grandchildren, and parents with their children, and some brave children all by themselves! Much fun was had by all.

Relaxing after our second Compost! performance, Helmsley Green Day, 16 August 2008

And thank you to one of our talented younger performers, Elizabeth, who gave me a beautiful papier mache flower she had made at one of the stalls earlier that day. I was very touched.

Thank you too to all the people who made Helmsley Green Day happen, particularly Monica Gripaios.

Schools Out Compost Crew

Congratulations to the West Bank Park Compost Crew, who arrived at the park in York on Wednesday morning as a disparate group of 6 to 9-year-olds, and by Thursday lunchtime had become transformed into a fully trained Compost Crew, performing my ‘Compost! The (mini-)Musical‘ with great gusto to crowds of onlookers! Oh, and they also became media superstars, with The Press on hand to take their photo, which appeared in today’s paper.

The photos below show how that transformation took place, over the course of two mornings, all outdoors in the park.

I am indebted to The Green Man (aka Stephen Whittaker from City of York Council, Parks and Open Spaces), Dr Rotter (aka Catherine Bamford from York Rotters) and The Bog Lady (aka Catherine Heinemeyer – with Bog Baby and Compost Crew Mascot Conor in tow - from the Friends of West Bank Park) for bringing their expertise and enthusiasm along and helping me to train our Compost Crew. I’m also very grateful to Gail from WRAP, for ensuring we had the right compost bins in the right place at the right time!

Two of the compost bins the children decorated and used in their musical have gone into immediate service, one in the park café and one in Pine Trees, just next to the park. So, the children have already made a big difference to making the world a cleaner, greener place. What a great thing to have achieved in their school holiday! Well done Compost Crew!

 

BBC Radio York ‘Compost!’ interview

To mark Compost Awareness Week 2008, Dougie Weake from BBC Radio York came and interviewed me and Mrs Finn’s Year 4 Class at Archbishop of York’s Junior School yesterday. (Find out more.) Our ’Compost Awareness Week’ interview was aired on Radio York today – followed by an interview with Charlie Dimmock.

Listen to our Radio York interview

Find out more about ‘Compost! The (mini-)Musical’

email me for more info.

Compost Awareness Week – 08

Mrs Finn’s Year 4 class at Archbishop of York’s Junior School are having a busy National Compost Awareness week this year. On Saturday, as part of York Fiesta, they performed my musical ‘Compost! The (mini-)musical’ in bright sunshine in York town centre, to a crowd of enthusiastic onlookers.

York Rotters were on hand with a stand to advise people about how to start composting, or to improve their composting further. Before the performance, Rotter John Cossham (the man in the white t-shirt in the photo above) came and gave the children a pep talk, which included balancing one of their drum beaters on his nose! (John also masquerades as juggler Professor Fiddlesticks.)

Then today, Dougie Weake of Radio York turned up at Archbishop of York’s Junior School to record the children singing some of the musical, and to interview some of us:

We’re all looking forward to hearing the piece on Radio York tomorrow!

 Listen to the Radio York interview

Composting congratulations!

Congratulations to Mrs Finn’s class at Archbishop of York’s CE Junior School, who gave the world premiere of the primary school version of Compost: the (mini-)Musical today! I taught them the musical last Tuesday, and they have spent the week practising it so they could perform it in front of the whole school in assembly today.

Their performance was greeted with great applause from all the pupils and staff. And rightly so, as they did fantastically well. And not only did they entertain the rest of the school, but they educated them too. After the show, Mrs Finn asked the pupils in the audience key questions about what you can and can’t put in a compost bin. And the pupils came up with all the right answers! So, Mrs Finn’s class are very good teachers!

Her pupils are going to perform the musical again – with an extra song I’ve just written – at their Harvest Festival celebrations coming up soon. So then parents will have the chance to be entertained and to find out all about composting too.

Read Compost! Thank You letters from pupils

Thanks to Dr Wannop, Archbishop of York’s school has a composting scheme in action, so pupils who are members of Gardening Club were able to go and see composting in action that very day.

Compost: The (mini-)Musical – A load of old rubbish!

The pupils of Mrs Finn’s Year 4 class at Archbishop of York’s CE Junior School in Bishopthorpe sang and drummed very heartily yesterday as they learned ‘Compost: the (mini-)Musical – A Load of Old Rubbish!‘

I spent the morning with the children teaching them my musical. Composting expert Dr Keely Wannop (also known as Keely Mellor!) was on hand to answer any composting questions the children had. Dr Wannop, who runs the school’s Gardening Club, even brought in some compost fresh from her garden (complete with worms!)

The previous day the children had beautifully decorated three compost bins that we used as drums in the musical. Here are form teacher Mrs Finn, student teacher Mr Robinson and compost expert Dr Wannop with the children’s bins:

The children will be performing the musical to the whole school in assembly next week. I’m looking forward to it lots!

Compost: The (mini-)Musical – World Première!

Pupils from Years 7 and 9 at Bootham School in York received rapturous applause yesterday (4 July 2007) for their world première of Compost: the (mini-)Musical, which they performed as part of the school’s Globe Day Carnival . The pupils worked very hard to learn the musical from scratch in under an hour and a half.

Listen to a clip! (mp3)

I’d like to thank the following people for making the performance possible:

• Keely Mellor and John Cossham from York Rotters, for training me in the art of compost making
• Keely – again - for inspiring me to write the musical
• Catherine Bamford of York Rotters, for transporting compost bins and coming along with me on the day
• Sarah Allen from Bootham School, for inviting me to come and take part in their inspiring Globe Day
• All the pupils who took part, and who performed the musical with such gusto! I hope they build and tend their compost heaps with equal commitment and gusto.

 Remember: Think global – Compost local!

A Charming Weekend – Part 2

To celebrate International Compost Awareness Week last week, our local composting champions, York Rotters, staged a Worm Charming Competition in Rowntree Park, preceded by some lusty compost bin drumming!

I was commissioned to write some very special poems for the occasion. I opened the competition with a poem in praise of worms, which began:

We come in celebration
Of the wonderful world of worms …

I also wrote 16 worm charms, magic rhyming spells to entice worms to the surface. One of the charms was in worm-speak (also known as Mumbly-Jumbly), in case worms don’t understand English very well.

Each Worm Charming competitor had a 2m x 2m square in which to find worms, and in each square was one of my worm charms for them to recite. The competitors weren’t allowed to dig any worms up – they had to encourage them to the surface in any way they could. Some innovative teams thought up using the vibrations of their mobile phone to lure the worms.

Unfortunately, after 30 minutes of intensive worm charming, only one worm was found – and that disappeared straight back into the ground before it could be popped into a waiting tub. At the event last year, teams found up to 12 worms! So, I don’t know where all the worms had gone this year. Maybe they were all scared away by the very loud (but great fun!) Rotters compost bin drumming!