Rock The Schools! (Promoting Music & Creating Awareness Of Hydrocephalus)

First up I just want to say a big thank you and congratulations to my good friend Tony Long for organizing Rock The Schools! He put a lot of hard work in to making this a success.

Also a huge thank you to all the school teachers and kiddies for coming and rocking out with us! Out of all the shows that we do, these shows have been by far the most fun!

On the 30th of September myself and the rest of the gang from Calling Utopia headed to Newbery Park Primary School for “Rock The Schools”. The previous year we had played this show in front of just the one school and it was to encourage the young students to get involved in music as we see it as such a fun, healthy way of expressing yourself. Last year it was in front of about 100-150 students.

This year we had the absolute pleasure of involving 5 schools from around the South East including, Newbery Park Primary, Millicent North Primary, St Anthony’s, Rendlesham Primary and Beachport Primary. All up nearly 400 kiddies and teachers!

We were also luck enough to have Newbery Park’s own school band “Rubber Band” play! Those kids did an excellent job!!

(The Schools band "Rubber Band")

The show was awesome! They jumped, danced and sang along with us! We all had a great time!

A couple of shots as the kids are coming in to the hall.

Now I must admit it wasn’t really planned to talk about hydrocephalus on the day. I was kind of saving it for MusiK MayheM but my Project Brain Drain tees had come in the week before so I thought it would be a good idea for the band to wear them at the show to see what kind of a response we got.

The tees had the desired effect! The students loved the design and asked what they were about after we had finished playing. Something that I wasn’t really for..

I have NEVER talked about my condition until this year and when I started PBD I didn’t really think that it would be hard to do. I was wrong. I started my story, I asked if anyone had heard of hydrocephalus. Hands went up. I asked if anyone else had it. ONE hand went up. A little boy. I gave him a high five and that was it. Everything from this year came back and I started crying, much to my own embarrassment! Apparently girls in the audience also started crying. Luckily my sister being as awesome as she is, took over and explained to everyone my story and what hydrocephalus is. You would not think a group of children of that magnitude could be so silent. They took every little bit of information in. They asked question when they weren’t quite sure. It was an AMAZING experience.

Days later I was still hearing news about the kids telling other people about the show and our talk about hydrocephalus. Children it seems are a VERY powerful awareness tool and I am so proud of them all.

It’s taken me a long time to be able to write this blog. The power of that day is still giving me shivers and I really hope that MusiK MayheM will be just as successful.

The band showing off their Project Brain Drain Tees!

I’ve posted the link to Jessica’s talk about hydrocephalus below. :-D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXgl31JQCNw

Till next time Brain Drainers!

Sarah Brain Drain XXX