Guidance and Advice on Ukulele Groups Playing Live

Low Fell Ukes Experience of Playing Live

The first two weeks

Low Fell Ukes has been meeting through Zoom since lockdown which, whilst being a great way to keep in touch and, actually, to introduce new songs has not given the satisfaction of uke players performing together live. We had managed to play outdoors in the local park on a couple of occasions but following a change in Government Guidance we began to meet again indoors on 17th August at our new home Gateshead Rugby Club.

We are fortunate in the club providing a large function room and the whole building having met the COVID Secure Venue standards.

We have now met twice with the first session attracting 15 folk and the second 20. We have arranged chairs 2 meters apart side to side and front to back in essentially two semi-circles with the leader at the front. The only exceptions to this have been people from the same family/bubble.

We risk assessed the activity and have got all members to agree to a set of expectations - See PDFs below, which we are trying to stick to as tightly as we can.

The formal times ie sitting and singing have been great - the informal times have been when folk have  needed to be reminded to keep their distance eg signing in or during our break when I have had to ask some folk to keep a distance. This has been taken well as they appreciate the need to keep safe.

In relation to singing this is the first time I have appreciated ukulele players’ bad habit of staring at music all the time. Just get folk to lower their music stands a little and then any droplets are going down to the book/tablet. Also we have kept the volume down. We were going to use a microphone but it hasn’t been needed.

This may sound a bit bureaucratic but it hasn’t spoilt our enjoyment and folk seem to feel the sessions are fun and they are safe.

We do have a number of members who are not yet confident to come back and are continuing our Zoom sessions for the moment. Another local group are meeting for the first time next week and we are going to try to Zoom the actual session. Seems like hard but we are monitoring how it goes.

It would be great if other groups could share their experiences and advice. Let me know how things are going with you on lowfellukes@outlook.com and I will publish all comments and thoughts.

I wish you all the best and happy and safe strumming.

Richard Taylor