Horniman Museum - Refugee Celebration Day
Horniman Museum - Refugee Celebration Day
31 January 2009 at 2:00pm
Horniman Museum and Gardens, Lewisham
Both professional GU musicians and three upcoming stars of the youth orchestra attended this event. The museum was open to the public as usual, but had many interactive events happening throughout the day. Grand Union had been invited to be involved with 3 of these. In attendance was, Yousuf Ali Khan, Andre Lafone, Tony Haynes, Ketan Kerai, Lili Ioncheva and Jonathan Andre.
From 11am-1pm an informal workshop was held in the “hands-on” centre. Over 60 visitors to the museum took part, many for the entire 2hours and a few passing through. They were all actively encouraged to participate through clapping, singing, dancing and percussion instruments.
From 1:30pm-2:30pm Jonathan Andre and Ketan Kerai from the Youth Orchestra contributed to museums “hands on” session, where they encouraged young people to ask questions about their instruments - djembe and Sirangi - and gave them the chance to touch the instruments, and have a go.
At 3pm Grand Union performed for 40 minutes in the main galleried space of the museum. There was well over 100 audience members, many sitting and standing for the whole performance and others passing through. Again the audience was encouraged to participate. A highlight being when the entire audience sung harmonies together, in call response with Jonathan Andre. There was an excellent response to invitations to the hackney Empire show with a large number of the audience requesting further details and taking away flyers. A number of Paths to Liberation CDs were purchased.