Broadside Ballad Workshop 1: Songs

You are invited to join this ballad making workshop using voice, words and improvising to make a broadside ballad – we will draw on themes in the show about witches, outsiders and banishment and you are very welcome to bring along your ‘ballad’ ideas!

Broadside Ballads were ‘story’ songs printed on one large sheet with illustrations and widely distributed and shared – common in the UK from the 16th to19th centuries. They could be political, topical, scandalous, or love songs.

The workshop is led by Anne Robinson alongside her exhibition at Make: ‘Coming Soon.. The Charmers!’ and building on the ‘sci-fi folk ballads’ and Broadsides she made for her ‘Charmers’ and ‘Hurrier’ art projects, expanding stories of the banished, broke, and usually unrecorded from archive fragments. ‘The Charmers’ are a (possibly fictional) band, formed by seven accused ’witches’ from Ayrshire. These runaway time-travelling-players were discovered on a 17th century scroll by an artist researching the Scottish witch trials. Now they’ve made a 4-track EP ‘Not to be Found’ and are ready to go out on tour. This is an art project in diverse forms: films, drawings, sound, broadside ballads, workshops and conversations.

No experience of songwriting necessary – all welcome!

Materials provided

Workshop Free (donations welcome )