Join Brian Laidlaw & Ashley Hanson from the touring folk group, The Family Trade for a concert and workshop exploring the music and poetry of place. Following a short concert, this workshop begins with a generative story-circle that identifies the most resonant locations, stories and collective memories of your community, and then offers the tools, form and framework by which to weave these touchstones into a site-specific song and / or poem. This workshop offers examples of deeply place-based songs and poems, and then guides participants through the process of ideating and composing site-specific songs and poems of their own, either individually or collaboratively.
About the Musicians
Brian Laidlaw is a poet-songwriter who, after years as a full-time touring folksinger, and a stint on the songwriting faculty at McNally Smith College of Music, is now nearing completion of a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Denver. His books include The Stuntman (Milkweed Editions, 2015) and The Mirrormaker (Milkweed Editions, 2018), each of which was released with a companion album of original music. He also has had lyrics in American Songwriter Magazine and Songwriting Consultant credits on multiple Grammy-Award- winning and -nominated albums. Brian is also a co-founder of Unrestricted Interest, a company offering poetry and songwriting mentorship for youth and adults on the Autism Spectrum.
Ashley Hanson is a theater artist, community organizer and advocate for the arts in rural areas. She is the founder of PlaceBase Productions and the Department of Public Transformation. She was recently named a 2018 Obama Foundation Fellow for her work with rural communities. She is the Director of the Small Town CAIR (City Artist in Residence) Program and The YES! House - a creative community gathering space - in Granite Falls, MN. She is also a musician, whose recent album - The Kirkbride Sessions - explores the ‘underbelly of ruralness.’ She holds an MA in Applied Theater from the University of Manchester (UK) with an emphasis on the role of arts in rural community development. She spends most of her time on the road visiting with people in rural places and believes wholeheartedly in the power of play and exclamation points!