Original post: December 2013

Fairandfunky are all about ethical gifts, Fairtrade, recycling workshops!

This song has a story with a very modern twist, which I will tell you in a minute, but first of all – fairandfunky really do have excellent, top quality ethical and fairtrade gifts, suitable for Christmas and other generous times in your lives, so check out their website to see what they have!

http://www.fairandfunky.com/

I heard one of the fairandfunky team, Helen Robinson, speaking at a Pecha Kucha night at the Hepworth Wakefield. I was impressed by not only her message of taking small, individual steps with recycling and using Fairtrade products in order to change the world, but also her passionate and eloquent delivery, in what seems to be quite a stressful scenario! I did not meet her that evening, but we subsequently connected on Twitter. I ended up writing her this song for an assembly she and Sophie Bebb (the other member of the fairandfunky team) were to deliver in a few days. I sent a recording of the song, lyrics sheets and scores to Helen, and they performed it with the students of Castle Hill School later that week.

The song has simple, and trickier, repeating patterns and it can be performed as a round, with optional percussion parts, so is easily adapted for less or more confident children and their adult helpers! The song focuses solely on recycling, but there are plans afoot to add  more verses and incorporate the Fairtrade message as well.

Helen and I did eventually meet up when she came to meet me one weekend when I was working on my Musical Sculptures workshops at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield, and again later in the year when she brought her three children to join in the workshop – here we and several other families are, performing our “Winged Figure” composition to the assembled art lovers!

I feel that the story of this song is not yet over, as many ideas have been discussed and further meetings are proposed. Watch this space!

Fairtrade Update

Well, I did meet up again with Helen and Sophie to deliver workshops at some of their Fairtrade Schools conferences. You can read more about those here!

You can read about fairandfunky’s three 2019 Fairtrade Fortnight conferences here!