Accordions for Islay Children VI - more press coverage

Christine MacIntyre's Twitter appeal for accordions for Islay children received a good double-page spread in the 25 February edition of The Ileach - the independent newspaper for Islay and Jura . . .

. . . including some nice mentions for Black Diamond Accordions!

[If you click on the pics they will enlarge enough to make the text readable.]

Accordions for Islay Children Appeal V: 'Twitter brings new boxes to Islay kids'

Here's the most exciting chapter in the Accordions for Islay Children Appeal story  so far.

The five accordions raised by the Twitter appeal arrived in Islay last week, and we're delighted to have received these photos of the island children playing them - which brought a tear to the eye (sentimental old things that we are)!

And then, this morning, a copy of The Oban Times arrived in the post, sent to us by Christine MacIntyre - instigator of the Twitter Appeal - with the following article on page 8:

Twitter brings new boxes to Islay kids

Islay children have Twitter thank for five new accordions winging their way to the island on the back on an internet appeal.

The boxes come in time for Feis Ile’s 65 kids to get their hands on them at a practice session last Wednesday.

With no money to buy instruments, Feisan nan Gaidheal Development Officer Christine Macintyre posted this Tweet on January 19: ‘Urgent: does anyone have any old accordions, smallish, they don’t want. Kids in Islay desperately need six. DM me with info. Thanks’  Christine said the tweet was more in hope than expectation, but within hours the baton had been picked up by her Twitter followers.

‘Armin, who does the Islay blog, re-tweeted it and later on so did Mike Russell, MSP. People just tweeted it round their contacts and it grew and grew.’

It wasn’t long before the accordion offers started to come in and within a week five instruments had been donated. Three were from within Argyll and one was from Glasgow, but it was the origin of the fifth that really raised eyebrows. Black Diamond Accordions are based on Mersea – the easternmost island in the United Kingdom, lying just off the coast of Essex.

Co-owner of the firm, Juliet Doyle, explained how Christine’s appeal had captured her attention: ‘I was just looking on Twitter at anything to do with accordions. When I came across Christine’s message I retweeted it. Then I suddenly thought we had this warehouse of unloved accordions.’

Soon a new Black Diamond box was sent on a long journey by road and sea to join the others converging on Islay.

Juliet confirmed that she and her partner Greg Dunn hope to visit Feis Ile later in the spring.

A delighted Christine said the sixth accordion could be on its way, as she has been in touch with another music company.

And the number could be doubled if Feisan nan Gaidheal can find the money to take advantage of an excellent discount offered on six second-hand accordions by another company, this time in Thurso.

* * *

Congratulations to Christine for a great job well done. We're hoping we might be able to meet up with her when we go to Scotland for the National Fiddle And Accordion Festival in Falkirk next week. And then we'll be taking a serious look at our diaries to see when we can fit in a visit to Islay!

Accordions for Islay Children Appeal: IV Fèisean nan gàidheal

Time for a bit about the work of Fèisean nan Gàidheal  - the organisation Christine works for, which ‘supports the development of community-based Gaelic arts tuition festivals throughout Scotland.’

This includes tuition in traditional music, which is what led to the appeal for accordions for Islay children - when the loaned instruments they had been playing were suddenly no longer available to them.

  

The Fèis movement came about when a group of parents and other individuals on the Isle of Barra became concerned that local traditions were dying out and that island children were not being taught traditional music in the context of formal education. To address this issue, the first Fèis Bharraigh was held on the island in 1981.

Inspired by the success of this first Fèis, many other communities throughout Scotland established similar events, each one community-led and tailored to local needs. Volunteers still form the core of most local Fèisean.

The skills taught at Fèisean are a highly valued aspect of the informal education of young people, as demonstrated by the level of volunteer commitment and parental support in local areas. Most importantly, the Fèis experience is valued by the young participants themselves. At national level, the Fèisean are seen by many as one of the most successful arts initiatives in Scotland.

Once the accordions Christine's acquired via her Twitter appeal have arrived safely on Islay, we hope to bring you photographs of the island children playing them. It is so inspiring to be involved, albeit in such a very small way, in encouraging young people to explore and develop traditional music-making skills.

Accordions for Islay Children Appeal: III - a short history lesson that has nothing to do with accordions!

As the two posts below have told, simply by putting out an appeal on Twitter, Christine was able to find 5 of the 6 accordions the children of Islay need in less than a week!

This really does illustrate very clearly the tremendous power of the social networking media. We couldn't be more delighted that, through Twitter, we found out about such a 'close-to-our-hearts' initiative, and were able to do something to help.

The prospect of having such an excellent excuse for visiting Islay as soon as possible is one we find incredibly exciting!

And there is another, non-musical (and even non-whisky-related!), reason to celebrate this small new link between the islands of Islay and Mersea. It has its roots in the early history of the Celtic church.

Just a short sail across the Blackwater estuary from Mersea Island lies St Peter's Chapel, Bradwell-on-Sea - arguably the oldest church in England. It stands on the spot where St Cedd landed by boat in 654 on a mission to bring the Christian message to what is now Essex.

And it's through St Cedd that we have a direct link back to Islay.

In 563, St Patrick, having established many monasteries in Ireland, sent his priest Columba to the west coast of Scotland, to found a monastery. Columba's journey took him through Islay, and thence to Iona.

Later, one of St Columba’s monks from Iona, Aidan, was sent, at the invitation of King Oswald of Northumbria, to set up a similar monastery at Lindisfarne on the north-east coast of the mainland.

It was in the monastery school at Lindisfarne that Cedd and his brothers Caelin, Cynebil and Chad learnt to read and write in Latin and become missionaries. The four brothers were all ordained as priests and two of them, Cedd and Chad, later became bishops.

Cedd's first mission was to Mercia, at the request of that region's king. Following his success in converting the Mercian people to Christianity, he was ordered to take the Gospel south to the East Saxons. So in 653 Cedd sailed down the east coast of England from Lindisfarne and landed at Bradwell, where he found the ruins of an old deserted Roman fort of Othona. There he built a small wooden chapel, which was soon replaced, using stone and bricks from the existing ruins, by a tall church some 50 ft long.

Isolated in a flat landscape, overlooking sea and marshland, far from human habitation even now, how immeasurably bleak Bradwell must have seemed to the seventh-century bishop from Northumbria when he arrived after his arduous journey by sea in an open boat.

(If you click on the pic above, you'll see the chapel dead centre on the horizon.)

You can see some of the Roman tiles incorporated into the walls (above). And (I think) a portion of the Roman fort in woods nearby (below).

Cedd's mission to the East Saxons was considered so successful that the same year he was recalled to Lindisfarne, made Bishop of the East Saxons, and established a further monastery, in Lastingham, where he caught the plague and died in 664.

In its heyday, St Peter's would have functioned not only as a church and a religious community but also as a hospital, library, school and farm, as well as a base for further missions. From there Cedd established other Christian centres at Mersea, Tilbury, Prittlewell and Upminster. The church continued as a place of worship for over 600 years, but eventually - perhaps owing to the remoteness of its location - passed out of use and was employed instead as a grain store, a shelter for cattle and even a hideout for smugglers and their spoils. (In the picture at the top of this post you can see where large holes were once knocked into the side walls when it was put to agricultural use.)

In 1920 the building was rediscovered. Excavations began, and it was soon realised that this was an ancient sacred place. St Peter's Chapel was restored as a place of worship in 1920.

I didn't get any shots of the interior on my last visit (it's dark inside and I didn't want to disturb other visitors by using flash) but you can see some here.

The simple modern altar (which can be see bottom left here) was consecrated in 1985 jointly by the Anglican Bishop of Chelmsford and the Catholic Bishop of Brentwood. Its supporting pillar contains three stones - one given by each of the three other places central to St Cedd's ministry: Lindisfarne, Iona and Lastingham.

For more info, the official St Peter's website is here. There's also an aerial view here; details of archaeological finds on the site here; and panoramas of the location and the chapel's interior here.

Here's Mersea Island, on the horizon, as seen from the Bradwell shore.

So there you have it.

WE find all this stuff interesting - hope some others out there do to! 

The next blog post on this accordions blog will contain at least one reference to accordions.

Probably.

Accordions for Islay Children Appeal: II

Following our initial contact, we exchanged many emails and tweets with Christine. We sent one of our 72-bass accordions to her in Glasgow:

columbastrail Columba's Trail
#accordion look at this bad boy! THANK YOU. #BlackDiamondAccordions from #islay children http://t.co/sjwwqSH3
31 Jan

BDAccordions Black Diamond
columbastrail Glad it arrived OK! 31 Jan

columbastrail Columba's Trail
BDAccordions Its a beauty. Thanks. Will get Neil Sinclair to get it going he is an ace player in Argyll,played with Jimmy Shand as a lad 31 Jan


BDAccordions Black Diamond
@columbastrail Yes, it will need some "playing in" - its travelled a long way: China to Mersea, Mersea to Glasgow! 31 Jan

@columbastrail Columba's Trail
@BDAccordions Then from Glasgow to Hebridean island of Islay total 608 miles + mileage from China . WoW! 31 Jan

BDAccordions Black Diamond
@columbastrail 10,956 miles China to Mersea, I'm reliably informed! 31 Jan

columbastrail Columba's Trail
@BDAccordions Wow! Over 11,500 miles that's some distance we might factor that into a song! 31 Jan

Armin Grewe took up the story on the Islay Blog :

31/Jan/2012
Accordions for Islay Children Appeal Update


After yesterday's reminder to vote for Islay High School at FilmG it's time to revisit another recent entry for an update, the Accordions for Islay Children Appeal. While I've tried to keep you updated in the comments of the post I thought it would be nice to revisit in more details what has happened since. To start with a tweet from Christine:


Thank you tweeps for your fantastic response to #accordions for #islay kids #tradmusic project. Big thanks from the kids


A total of 5 accordions have now been found, which should be enough for now. Two of them have already arrived, here's a (badly photoshopped collage of their pictures #1 and #2):





Unfortunately I don't know much about the red accordion on the left apart from that it comes from Brian. I do know quite a lot more about the black one on the right however:

It has travelled all the way from Mersea Island (it really has travelled much further than that, but that's another story for another day), the most easterly inhabited island in the UK, off the coast of Essex, England. It comes courtesy of Juliet and Greg of Black Diamond Accordions, who live and work on the island, hopefully forging a connection between Mersea Island and the Isle of Islay. They also run the Black Diamond Accordions Blog, where you'll find a lot about (no surprise there) accordions and in particular accordion music. They are of course also on Twitter, under @BDAccordions, where they heard about the appeal and decided to join in. Juliet and Greg (and Juliet’s daughter, Iona) hope to travel to Islay later this year to see and hear their and other accordions in action, for the music as well as for their lifelong love of the Hebrides.

I hope there will be a video of the Islay children playing the accordions to share at some point, until then here are two videos from Juliet and Greg, showing a few impressions of Mersea Island together with some nice accordion music: Sam Pirt plays Tivoli and Sam Pirt plays a traditional Swedish tune, "Der Stod en Jungfru".


The remaining three accordions are expected from Mid-Argyll for the end of this week. I'm also told that BBC Alba is thinking about a programme about the accordions and how social media helped with getting them organised. I'll try to update you as the story of the accordions for the Islay children continues…

We'll keep you updated on the progress of the donated accordions as they make their way from mainland Scotland over to Islay.

Hopefully, we'll have some photos - or maybe even videos - of the Islay children playing their new instruments soon.

And of course we are now wistfully poring over maps of western Scotland, CalMac ferry timetables, and our already madly overcrowded diaries, working out exactly how and when we are going to make the journey to Islay ourselves.

More news soon . . .

Accordions for Islay Children Appeal: I

Just over a week ago, we noticed the following tweet on Twitter:

Island of Islay children asking twitters to help them find 6 #accordions for a #tradmusic project. Can the #Twitter community help!

And then, a few days later, we saw - also on Twitter - a link to the following post by Armin Grewe on the Islay Blog, with the background to the appeal:
  

Diluain, 23/Jan/2012

Accordions for Islay Children Appeal

Islay is very musical island, examples include the Islay Pipe Band, The Islay Sessions and while it seems to have changed to a whisky festival for some people the original Islay Festival - Fèis Ìle or to give it its full title The Islay Festival of Music & Malt is mainly about music. This is also where this appeal is linked to, to help keeping a musical tradition on Islay alive:

I'm not sure how long we've been following each other on Twitter, but last year I briefly met Christine (or @columbastrail on Twitter) in Kennacraig. She works for fèisean nan gàidheal , which ‘supports the development of community-based Gaelic arts tuition festivals throughout Scotland.’ This includes music tuition, leading to the tweet which caught my eye on Thursday last week:

Island of Islay children asking twitters to help them find 6 #accordions for a #tradmusic project. Can the #Twitter community help!

Some background for this request: Fèis Ìle was providing accordion lessons to a group of Islay children. They were using accordions borrowed from a Dunoon group but they now need the accordions back leaving the Islay children with no accordions. Christine turned to Twitter to ask for help and has already had some success:

Twitter has yielded 3 #accordions for #Islay #tradmusic kids. A big thank you. Still need 3 more, come on tweeps fantastic work

In other words, 50% of the target has been reached, but I'm sure 100% is possible if we keep spreading the word. It's already spreading from Twitter: newsnetscotland is reporting Twitter helping Islay children with accordion plea and ForArgyll writes Any spare accordions to help musical children on Islay?

If you have a spare accordion (or two, or three) you can either donate or loan, you can get in touch with Christine via Twitter (@columbastrail) or if you're not on Twitter you can email her at christine@feisean.org. Even if you can't help directly please help by spreading the word. I'm confident by the end of the week Christine can report success with six accordions having been found for the children on Islay.

The words 'children with no accordions' and 'help', together with 'island' and 'Islay' proved a completely irresistible combination, and so we immediately wrote to Christine:

Hi Christine - we've seen your Twitter appeal for 'unloved' accordions for your excellent children's trad music project. We have lots of accordions that are currently unloved, simply because they have never been played! They are brand new. (As are we, in fact!)

The Islay blog mentions that you'd be interested in accordions on loan as well as gifted. If you'd like to borrow one of our 72-bass instruments on long-term loan, you'd be very welcome.

It would feel rather nice to be able to send one all the way from Mersea (Britain's most easterly inhabited island) to a west-coast Scottish isle. Do drop me a line if this idea would be helpful to you.

Best wishes

Juliet

Christine replied:

 

A 72 would be perfect.

Just Googled where you are and this would make a fantastic news story of one island community coming to the aid of another.

I was wondering how to thank all the wonderful folks that have helped and I'm thinking perhaps the Islay children will write an appropriate accordion tune dedicated to all their donators, I may even write a wee ditty to go with it.

Regards Christine

We'll post the next instalment of the story here very soon.


Meanwhile, here are some of Armin's photos of the beautiful island of Islay: