So I’ve been talking a fair bit about fire service work in #Skye with a few references to my former life in a rock band. I’ve had a few questions from people on here about how/why I made the switch from this guy to this guy.
In 2016 @BedlamSix split up after ten years on the road. I threw myself into writing a musical about political spin and populist governments loosely following the structure of the Oedipus myth. You can read all about that here: louisbarabbas.com/jocasta/
Here’s one of the songs (of course I cast myself as the villain).
Musicals are a famously collaborative medium, one shouldn’t really attempt writing them solo. So by the time I’d written this thirty song epic, secured funding, recorded a cast album and staged a showcase at The Lowry theatre I was REALLY tired.
I later realised I’d experienced total burnout. I hadn’t really processed the end of my old band, just got stuck into a new project, kept moving, I felt utterly hollowed out. At this time my grandfather died and I went up to Skye to sort out his house.
I’d been coming here since I was a baby, sometimes staying for long stretches but never calling it home. This time, however, I felt a huge weight drop from my shoulders, a massive knot of tension I hadn’t even realised was there.
My partner and I decided to move in. Just for a bit. To work out our next steps. We’d both just finished jobs and weren’t sure what to do. We’d only ever lived in a one-bedroom flat in Manchester so being surrounded by hills and trees was a phenomenal change.
I know a lot of people in Skye are sick of incomers talking about the restorative powers of the island so I’ll avoid that sort of language, but the move transformed me. The clean air, the wildlife, the lack of advertising billboards constantly highlighting one’s shortcomings.
Bryony got a job in a shop and I drifted for a while on the dregs of my dwindling song royalties. We adopted a neurotic dog with a traumatic past and became a strange little family. We couldn’t go back now, Lorna would never be able to handle a city.
So I quit music altogether and applied for the fire service. Why not? That’s a natural trajectory isn’t it? A way of finally being a useful person to society but still getting the occasional bout of applause. Here I am graduating from initial training in Oban.
The crew at @DunveganFire fills the hole left since my band split. Indeed it feels very similar. A bunch of friends hurtling towards a crisis at high speed. What’s more rock and roll than that?
And I was already very used to quick changes in a shared dressing room.
A lot of people think “oh I couldn’t do that!” (I know I did) but you’d be surprised what you’re capable of. If you have even half an inkling you might like to be an on-call firefighter check out the website firescotland.gov.uk/careers/on-cal… or ask my crew @DunveganFire for info.
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The challenge with organising things in village halls is they aren’t dedicated venues with paid staff, they are fuelled by goodwill. Sometimes the business of fixing the roof and keeping the lights on supersedes curating a dedicated programme of events.
Indeed some halls have ended up as the sole responsibility of a single volunteer who becomes the only person who knows how things work and where the fuse box is. It can feel like a thankless task and it isn’t surprising when people get jaded.
The combination of folk taking the hall for granted (or forgetting it’s there entirely) and a growing resentment in the people keeping the damp at bay leads to a vicious circle: if you want to use the hall you have to negotiate with someone who’s lost their passion for the place.
The ongoing mission was/is to keep coming back into the halls throughout the project (and hopefully long into the future) so that the venues themselves run through the work like the words in a stick of rock.
So step two involved me writing songs inspired by the conversations and then coming back into those halls to record them with local singers and musicians. I’m currently ten songs in with notes for three or four more.
Throughout this whole project I’ve been very aware of how important it is not to filter or erase the original voices, that often well-meaning creatives bust in and find great local material, make an album and hoover up all the attention leaving no legacy at all.
Village halls are brilliant places. They’re so versatile and yet can have a real character of their own. My project for #Aiseirigh#CultureCollective aimed to get their usage up after so many had been left empty over lockdown, particularly as culture spaces to share experiences.
I didn’t want to just put on events though. Events are great but they only attract events people. I didn’t want to have lots of two-hours-where-a-big-group-of-people-silently-watch-a-small-group-of-people-do-something.
So I teamed up with @CatherineMacP12 from @HLHArchives. We came up with a plan to hold memory sessions with free refreshments. No agenda, just people getting into their local hall and chatting about the past and present.
Right so I’ve got two full days left at the helm of the H&I Voices account. I’ve talked about being a crew member of @DunveganFire and working with @SEALLEventsSkye, plus a bit about my past as a touring musician. Today is going to be all about @CultureColSco.
The #CultureCollective was set up in the wake of the covid lockdowns as a way of getting money to artists and projects quickly, with funding pots administered by local organisations throughout Scotland (in the case of Skye & Lochalsh it’s @SEALLEventsSkye and #AtlasArts).
The Skye & Lochalsh group is called #Aiseirigh and comprises artists Hannah Myers and @MalcolmPlockton, theatre director Daniel Cuilin, playwright Lesley Wilson and musicians Angus Mackenzie and @louisbarabbas (me).
An offshoot of being dragged back into the creative industries after a fallow period of burnout is that I’d found a different kind of confidence. The fire service made me feel useful for the first time in my life so I now felt more at ease putting myself forward as an artist.
In 2021 @CreativeScots created a covid recovery fund to stimulate the grassroots arts sector that had been so debilitated by lockdown. @SEALLEventsSkye administered the fund for Skye/Lochalsh and created six jobs for artists to do community work in various creative disciplines.
I applied for the position that focused on reinvigorating community spaces, citing experience from when I organised events for Manchester label @debtrecords.