Advice on Hosting a Workshop

[Richard Francis]

A couple of us are looking to set up a Bluegrass/Old Time Acoustic workshop and jam in the Okoboji area of northwest Iowa. We have a retreat center we can use, but none of us has any experience organizing and leading such an event. If you've done it, we'd love to hear from you.

[CarlM]

A friend of mine is one of the instructors at the Strawberry Jam Camp at the Strawberry Point (Iowa) Bluegrass Festival. If you PM me I can send you his contact information. You might be able to talk with him or even make an arrangement with him to help. He is close friends with Bob Black who also teaches at the Strawberry Jam Camp. He and Bob also put on the Kalona Festival.

[Richard Francis]

Thanks. My email is 8stringster@gmail.com

[Southern Man]

I'm on the other end of these things as far as music goes (as a learner, not an organizer), but I've led any number of workshops and trainings on a variety of other topics. My advice is to focus on a few things instead of being a "generalist" workshop. Pick out some learning objectives pointing in one direction and organize your various sections around those objectives.

My advice is worth what you paid for it.

[Bill McCall]

Depends on what you want. Is this an ongoing session or one time only?

My buddy and I set up an ongoing 'workshop/jam' several years ago where we created a short setlist of standards and allowed it to grow slowly over time. The idea was to learn the tunes and improve our ability to improvise with them. The 'workshop' ran like a jam, but only calling tunes from the list. We had about 10 folks in the beginning and it worked pretty well. There was no instruction, just a group of folks with an interest in the common goal and willing to be patient with each other.

Over time, a couple of years, the jam part became 'anything goes' as the use of a setlist fell by the wayside, but the workshop part carried on with only a small number of tunes played weekly (3) by a small subset of the original group. We provide feedback to each other regarding their successes and failures with their improvisations. It's been ongoing for about 7 years and we find it very useful.

If you're looking for a directed, one time only event, I got nothing.

But good luck with your event.

[Richard Francis]

"Focus on a few things" sounds helpful. Thanks.

[Richard Francis]

We are testing the waters. If we do one, and it goes well, it could be a regular thing. Since we are expecting people to travel to it and stay overnight, it won't be weekly or monthly.

[mbruno]

I run a bunch of workshops, happy to help where I can.

There's two main types of workshops - essentially "mechanical" workshops that focus on a specific set of skills (double stops, G runs etc) and "intro" workshops that focus more on how to participate in a jam (going over specific jam friendly tunes, intro to nashville numbering etc).

It sounds like an intro workshop is what you all would want to run - especially if it's recurring. My suggestions:

1. Have a defined outcome - what do you want attendees to take away from the session?
2. Have printed (or online or both) materials for home study - printed chord charts, Nashville Numbering explanations etc.
3. Focus on the middle group - you'll have a variety of skill levels from absolute beginner to more advanced folks. It's really tempting to play to the worst person in the room as they usually have the most questions (and often those questions are easiest to answer). Don't. Focus on the middle - it'll be the most helpful for everyone. Beginners will need to stretch a bit, those in the middle get a good lesson, and those more advanced get a good reminder of basics etc.

The Wernick Method is a pretty good one for this type of jam. I would recommend looking up that program and taking what you can from it.

Another thing that may less time intensive is just calling a song a week.

At the jam I host in Seattle, I've started a "Song / Tune a week" where I call a song / tune that I feel is either under-called or would be a jam buster without notice. I announce the song a week in advance and provide chord charts with recordings to listen to. Jammers have a week to figure it out. So far, it's worked really well (this week we're doing Soldier's Joy, but last week was Mean Mother Blues - a real chordy song haha). Before the jam, I usually have a quick 20 minute dry run for anyone that has questions on the tune. This essentially is a "song workshop" - we go over chords, the melody, and any weird things about the tune. It's been really well received by my group - so far, no jammer has sat out when I called the song for that week

LMK if you need materials etc for a workshop. Happy to see what I have that can help.

[Ranald]

That's great advice (above) from mbruno. I'd add that besides not spending too much time answering questions from the beginner, don't indulge the guy who wants to talk about advanced theory. Depending on your own level of musical education, that person's questions may be more interesting to you than other people's questions, but you'll probably be losing the rest of the class. In my experience attending workshops, if a workshop leader is answering a number of questions from one student, they're losing and alienating the rest. Try asking, "Are the rest of you following this?" If not, you can tell the person, "We can talk about this after the workshop."

A technique I learned while teaching university is that after you say, "Do you have any questions?", count to thirty seconds silently. This seems like a long time to an instructor, but it isn't. The pause gives learners time to collect their thoughts, or to gather up the courage to speak. A final suggestion is that you print a simple questionnaire, with about six or seven questions to be answered anonomously, e.g.:

What did you want from this workshop?
What did you like about this workshop?
What did you dislike?
What did you want more of?
What did you want less of?
In your experience with workshops, how would you rate this one?
Any other comments?

Give the learners ten minutes to fill these out before you end the workshop. It the questionnaires go out the door, you'll never see them again. You'll get contradictory answers, but you'll also get feedback (which may not be said aloud) that you can learn from, as well as a good assessment of whether you accomplished what you wanted.

Good luck.

[grassrootphilosopher]

There are things that need to be focused on that are entirely not music relatet. But withouth those the bird won´t fly.

You need to have a "business plan". How much money are you willing to spend? What is the target group that the workshop is aiming at? How accessible is the target group? (are they local, do they come from farther away, are they rich/poor, beginners, advanced etc.)

You need to focus on logistics. Where shall the workshop take place? Is it a sure deal to be able to use the workshop space? Is it a one day affair or a several day workshop? In any case, is overnight accomodation something to focus on? Is it available, close to the workshop site, how are the costs? What means of transportation will the workshop participants use to get to the workshop (car, train, bus, plane)? Is there parking space, shuttle service etc.?

How about food? Will someone provide it? Who? At what cost? If not, are there ample stores/restaurants to fill your needs?

How many people will shoulder the workshop duties? Are they competent enough to do so?

I would advise to network with people that are localy close and competent, who maybe run festivals and who are willing to share information of how they do it. Contact other venues (try Steve Kaufman for example, www.flatpik.com, who is a very nice man and who runs Kaufman Camp, one of the major workshops in the world)

Be aware that you might loose money the first year around. If you make a profit be aware of the tax man (therefore maybe set up a nonprofit organisation to funnel the proceeds to for next time´s workshop)

Musically I advise to punch high. Try to get the best instructors available. Be aware that a great musician may not be a great instructor. Know what you want musically. Take a page out of other workshop´s books (like Sore Fingers Week - UK, Banjoree - D, Kaufman Camp - US, Adiaha´s Bluegrass Camp - D), see how they do it, what their compas is etc.

Don´t feel discouraged by all of these things.
I was a co-founder of one of Germany´s major bluegrass festivals, "Greven Grass" (trying to continue the tradition of the unfortunately long time defunkt but legendary Neusüdende festival). All of the things mentioned above were on my mind and caused some concern while being on the way for the first year. It went allright, no financial loss and the festival is now in its fifteenth year.