Barn er Bra Festival

Barn er bra? What the hell does that mean? Well it's Norwegian:

Barn - Children
Er - Are
Bra - Good

This is a week-long festival, as the organisers say; "For, Av og Med Barn" (For, by and with children). It's held locally here in Haugesund in the Autumn holiday and has been since 2000. The focus is on the children being a part of the development of the festival and including everyone as an active member in the activities, of which there are many.

The activities range from traditional Norwegian Friluftsliv practices to skateboarding, to music, to kickboxing. All children in Haugesund are allowed to participate, without discrimination.

This year I was chosen to teach at the festival. My teacher is one of the organisers and picked up early on my musical background when I arrived at school. He originally thought I should help out with the musical, sneakily not informing me of the possibility to teach skateboarding (a lesson I would much prefer to take, actually). Later I discovered the skateboarding and also another activity called Kid Rock.

Kid Rock is a new introduction this year for the festival and invlolves children bringing their own instruments along and the group creating some kind of a band with whatever they have. This I found more exciting than doing a musical.

When I turned up at the pre-festival meeting and planning session though, it turned out that my teacher hadn't actually got the message through that I was supposed to help with Kid Rock, so I ended up doing the Musical anyway. So when I turned up at this meeting, I was greeted by 5 nervous looking teenage girls (honestly I'm not that scary, I was the only English person OK!?), all colourfully dressed (I wear black or dark blue mostly) and with enough collective makeup to make even you (yes YOU!) look human!

Ok, joking aside, what do you think happens when you are instructed to make a musical with a bunch of teenage girls?

Think about it for a few seconds and you'll follow where I'm going with this...

...

...

High... :(

School... :( :(

Musical..... :( :(

Yes, you got it. We were meant to be making something "with a message", with "meaning". The suggestion was that it could have something "to do with the environment"... And they come up with High School freaking Musical

I haven't yet seen the film High School Musical (for some reason!) but due to being thrust into an obviously fanatical group of teenage girls who seem to love it, I guess I have to, especially since they decided I was going to be their pianist!

Great, so now I not only have to be involved in the making of a kiddie reproduction of High School Musical, I have to actually play during the songs!

Ok, it's not that bad... I'm an optimist and a positive guy, so I'm going to make the best of the situation. I'll watch the film when I get back from my Mountain trip this weekend. I'll try to "get into" the feeling of it as best I can. I'm sure the kids will love it, and that's most important!

I will report on my experiences I'm sure.







...They won't even notice me suffering in the background :D