THE PICKET: Part II

The Picket's Dry Bar News
- Information for young people

Dry Bar membership cards
Membership to the Dry Bar is free. All you have to do is get a registration form filled in and get it back to us. Please make sure we can read your full name and address, and that it is signed by you if you're 18 or over, or a parent or guardian if you're not. We've sent out all the outstanding membership cards last week, so if you haven't received yours yet, it means there was missing or incorrect information on your form. Please contact me and I’ll send you a copy of the registration form. Email address below.

John Peel gig
13th October 2005 is John Peel Day. That day there will be gigs everywhere around the country to celebrate the legend that was John Peel. Many people have asked us to put a John Peel event on including the Radio1 Onemusic producers. So we're planning our John Peel Dry Bar event on Monday the 10th of October. We’ve booked some acts, but there are still places available.
We are looking for the "weird and wonderful" - is your music cutting edge, alternative, progressive, or in any other way in the John Peel spirit, then let us know! For those who have never heard of John Peel, check out the BBC website on http://www.bbc.co.uk/
radio1/alt/johnpeel/

Exchange with Scotland / more Rock Dry Bar gigs
We are also planning another Rock Dry Bar in October and November more details to follow. A group from Ross-shire in Scotland have asked us for advice on how to organise Dry Bar events, and are planning to come down and bring some bands with them to perform at the Dry Bar. Check out the website on www.thedrybar.org for more info. as and when we know more. This could be the start of future exchanges to send Dry Bar bands to Scotland as well...

Singing workshops / ‘Girlz’ Dry Bar
Have you always wanted to sing, but didn't know how to start, other than singing along to your favourite tunes in your bedroom or backing tracks downloaded from the internet? Would you deep down like to sing with real musicians? This might be for you. In October, we're organising a workshop where we put you in front of a band. Places are limited, so if you are interested drop us an email. We mainly encourage girls and young women to this workshop, as the backing band will be all female (we've got some ace
musicians lined up for this!).
Each participant from the workshops will be invited to perform at the Dry Bar that we are organising at the end of October. This will be a Dry Bar with all female performers, singing either with a band or to backing tracks.

Dance and Urban Dry Bars
We are also planning more Dance and Urban Dry Bars, but are looking for young people who are into these music genres who would like to join our Young Promoters Team to help assist in the organisation of the gigs.

Dry Bar website
If you haven't checked out the Dry Bar website, please do at
www.thedrybar.org You can profile yourself as an artist under links and we'll have a facility ready soon to create your own microsite. Also, the forum is the place to find new band members, or other people to make music with, tip off people about your gigs, or your demo.
You will have to register to post, and you can specify what music you’re into, as there are various forums (rock, urban, pop).
Please contact me for further information.
Cheers,
Karin Struyk, TEL: 07733323299.
Dry Bar Project Manager,

Further information about the Picket’s Dry bar project is attached.

NEWSLETTER...

The Picket’s Dry Bar
The Dry Bar is one of the Picket’s main projects and focuses on young people aged 12-18.
The project includes the Young Promoters Group, a number of young people from all over Merseyside, from a variety of sub cultures and musical preferences. They are being trained and mentored to become ‘proper’ promoters. They take the lead on all events organized by the Dry Bar, and also explore possibilities to fundraise for other events, workshops, seminars and exchanges.
Part of the work is also their personal development as young people. Many of these youngsters are from socially excluded backgrounds, have got behavioural problems in school, have dropped out of school, have been in touch with the law, can’t read or write, etc. It has been amazing to see how they developed as a group and as individuals. We intend to continue this development and expand on the amount of young people we involve. At present we work with a group of about 18 people but have already received lots of requests from other young people who would like to join.
At the moment, we organise our events monthly -the Dry Bar gigs- and meet up once or twice weekly with the promoters.
We are also working to develop our relationship with young women and girls providing opportunities for them to become organisers of events or performers. Initially most girls only wanted to attend as audience.
The Young people we work with have developed their own website www.thedrybar.org which will/is providing a community/networking opportunity for U18s bands and acts. We feel it is important that they do this themselves as it gives them the sense of ownership.

Future Projects

Heritage Lottery Fund
The Young Promoters are developing a project, which will last for a year, where they will investigate what musical heritage means to them. The research is as much important as the event at the end. The idea is to create an exhibition, expressing the young people’s heritage. We are also hoping to get the exhibition on Eric’s from the museum of Liverpool Life on loan for this event. We’ve had meetings with the Heritage Lottery Fund, and they very much liked the ideas.

Local Network Fund
We’ve just been asked to put a bid in to the Local Network Fund to fund staffing for the development of the Young Promoters Team. This would also give us a bit of money for running costs for the weekly meetings, as well as one or two exchange trips with similar projects elsewhere in the UK (We’ve got connections with Sheffield, London, Dublin and Belfast among others)

Truancy alternative
We’ve been asked to put a plan together whereby young people who are truants can go to their schools and negotiate deals whereby they agree to go back to school a few days a week, but ask the school to give the money they receive from the Government for their education, to be redirected to a project that teaches them alternative skills. Some of the young people attending the Dry Bar events would be suitable for this and have already expressed that they’d rather help out/be/learn skills in the venue than go to school or sit at home. We will investigate this further once we have relocated to the new building.

Drop in Centre
The Picket has always acted as source of advice for people to seek help in finding out about all aspects of the music industry. We intend to continue this. Through our extensive network of contacts, we can always point someone in the right direction and provide impartial and independent professional advice on the music industry.

Links with open access college/universities
The Dry Bar has developed links with John Moores Community College, Hope University and University of Liverpool’s Institute of Popular Music, as well as LIPA’s FLES programme.
These higher education institutions have expressed an interest in building into their learning programmes work experience at the Dry Bar where their students get involved in organising events for young people and work together with disadvantaged young people.
The Dry Bar at present has links established with and receives support from Liverpool Youth Service, youth organizations, community groups, music projects and music industry companies. They refer their young people to us, and in future we will continue to work together with these organisations.

International Exchanges, other developments
We have established links with various European organizations for exchanges with other youth projects. Most recently we met up with people from SPLOT in Poland, who have invited me to put proposals in for exchanges to/from Poland.
We have also already started developing ideas for work with young refugees, and young people with mental health problems.

Evaluation
The Dry Bar project has been evaluated extremely positively by Merseyside ACME, below is an extract from their evaluation.
5.1 The Picket’s Dry Bar.
“Despite the fact that the Dry Bar project has had to deal with the adverse impact of the closure of the host venue, the Picket, its self-evaluation material is exemplary, giving an excellent insight into the experiences of participants, tutors and the project manager. Dry Bar note some difficulties in collecting data from young people (low response by young artists to written forms, difficulties in setting up telephone interviews using young volunteers as interviewers and resistance to registration by young people attending events), but have nevertheless persisted in both collecting information and responding actively to the points young people raise. For example, young people felt that mixed urban and rock nights did not work well and Dry Bar responded by organising specifically themed nights.
Young people are very clear about the benefits to their musical skills of performing at the Dry Bar, citing, for example, ‘how to compile a set’, ‘how to set up and perform quickly and professionally’, ‘how to relate to an audience’. They feel they get very good support from Dry Bar staff; their criticisms fall into two categories that the venue being used is too small and that they don’t get to play Dry Bar gigs often enough.
18 young people are now working with the Dry Bar as young promoters and they are very positive, both about the level of ownership/authorship they experience ‘able to bring in new ideas and them being followed up’ and the specific skills they are developing e.g. ‘running events efficiently and successfully’, ‘organising and publicising’, ‘working as part of a team’, ‘discussing music, chatting with different people’. Their major issue is that they do not have office equipment or their own office space.
We have attended a Dry bar event and spoken independently to young people and can also confirm these very positive responses.
It is important to note the value of Dry Bar’s work within a youth work/youth development context. It provides a relaxed focal space where youth workers can identify and work with young people on a range of issues. Although some of the users of dry Bar regret the fact that there is a no alcohol policy, comments such as ‘No trouble with drunks’, ‘No pissheads’, ‘No beer bottles on the floor’ indicate how much others appreciate this.
Dry Bar has a clear view of the kinds of developments it wishes to pursue. These include:
Expanding the promoter’s training opportunities.
Giving the promoter’s more “possession” of the project, offering them the opportunity to develop their skills and help them into education or further education.
Developing partnerships with colleges that teach music, to build Dry Bar into the courses curriculum as work experience in the music industry.
Development of a “young people’s venue” including office/social space.

Dry Bar’s approach to self-evaluation means that it is collecting a body of evidence of the impact of its work, which will impress a range of funders”.

For information about the Picket’s Dry Bar project please contact:
Karin Struyk,
Dry Bar Project Manager,
T: 07733323299.
Dry Bar Project Manager,

(Source: lorna oreilly Email:hayesoreilly@merseymail.com)

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