From the Workshop Open Mic, here’s Woolford Scott’s contribution - his AABA song was too fresh to record, so he played this - isn’t is great?

Back in 2014, a short-notice cancellation was followed by the kind folk of Northampton College offering the facilities there to host our workshop - the arrangement worked, and so this year followed a similar pattern.

We began on Wednesday by asking ourselves some questions, with some interesting results. An evening session followed before participants retired to their digs with Northampton-based songwriters and B&Bs.

Thursday involved an exercise that attempted to push people outside their comfort zones and see what happened - a ‘storming’ rather than ‘norming’ activity! A delicious takeaway from Kingsley Balti was followed by the traditional session at the Olde England pub, a recommended stop if you’re looking for good beer and craic (on a Thursday in Northampton).

On Friday, guest Misha Hoekstra took us through an exercise for performing songwriters before we   undertook the 30-minutes drive to Redfield and continued with co-writing, picking up a Greenlandic Dane, visiting an open mic, then saying goodbye to one of the participants who was called away with a home emergency.

Saturday’s breakfast was followed by a very success speed-cowrite (3 songs in 90 minutes), an exercise led by Rob Bray on AABA structure that also yielded some great results, and an evening open mic plus late night session.