A working majority of the directors present: the ones who didn't quite fit in the pic are also lovely!
On Saturday we held the annual Directors Day for the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers. Over the years we have focused increasingly on finding ways to include as much practical, hands-on work for all delegates as possible, as that is a core skills which can only really be developed by doing. This often involves, as it did this year, work in small groups where people take it in turns to direct and sing for each other, facilitated by a coach.
The faculty always meet the night before to road-test our coaching models. This is partly so that we go into the day confident about how they work, and having figured out where the pitfalls may lie and what to do about them. And in fact it often seems as if the very act of contingency planning makes it less likely that our anticipated difficulties arise as we can head them off before they happen. But it’s also so that we get some time to nourish our own praxis, both as directors and as coaches. We learn a lot in these sessions to inform both the coaching that follows the next day and our own week-to-week directing.
