Wow, this is going to be tough. And it’s becoming a full-time job.
We are now on DRAFT 5 of the musical story, part of which is exploring both the Israeli/Palestinian and Northern Ireland conflicts in parallel. It is not easy developing what we hope is a top class and entertaining experience with a complex subject matter that can easily antagonize each of the communities featuring in the story. Yet, we are making progress, listening to comments and criticisms and adapting the story as we go.
We are hoping that once the workshops kick off with the participants, commencing in June in Jerusalem, that we can make more rapid progress. We believe it is a good approach; giving the young, talented musicians, singers and dancers a platform that affords them the opportunity to be creative and shape the story, music, songs, choreography and on-stage visualizations.
We are also building out the professional team, both business and creative; marketing, finance, fundraising, legal etc and creative project leaders, artistic leaders, choreography etc. We’re pretty spread out living in different places; Ireland, Italy, Spain, UK, Israel and Palestine so far. And that geographic spread is going to further test us in terms of our management capabilities.
Aaron Wilkinson, currently based in Toronto, is developing an online music platform that is allowing a number of professional composers and musicians to collaborate in the creation of the music and songs that might feature in the musical. Later, the platform will be opened up to the young workshop participants.
The team are all getting together in Dublin on Friday 7th February to talk through the business and creative challenges and hopefully that will enable us to get to know each other and help improve how we communicate together.
And while we, the What About Us team, focus on our own initiative, we are all observing too many political leaders causing more problems than finding solutions. Just in the last week Iran is the focus and the nuclear deal, so carefully and patiently constructed, now under threat. A small group of ego’s putting their own agenda ahead of their people. Its sad what money and power gets away with.
Billions and billions of euros ae spent on war each year. The war industry, the arms manufacturers, all have a very loud and persuasive voice fuelling the debate and they don’t come down on the side of peace building. If as much money was spent on peace initiatives the world would be much safer and happier peace. The politicians need to be challenged, more need to be done. We all must speak up, shout even.
Meanwhile the What About Us team will keep going, hoping our little project might make a small contribution to the discussion.