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AORTAS (www.aortas.org.uk) supports & promotes original songwriting & the traditional musics of the
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AORTAS (Oral Traditions and Songwriting) is an umbrella for the activities of Dan Plews (teacher, performer and songwriter) including his work with other musicians. This includes sessions, ceilidhs, songwriting workshops (UK, Austria, Romania, Ireland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Slovenia), private teaching and open mics for songwriters, which we've run in different venues in Northampton, Buckingham

and Milton Keynes since 2007 (or even earlier, we can't remember).

2011 saw the formation of the pan-european GRUNDTVIG-funded partnership 'Playing for Integration' and Aortas Education Ltd was founded. Through this partnership with eight other countries AORTAS took UK learners to workshops in 8 different countries. The focus of the workshops was intercultural exchange, writing songs, and the translation of traditional songs from different countries. The process is the product, but we have also produced two songbooks of original and traditional songs which are at www.aortas.org.uk

April 2013 saw heats for a Song Competition whose winners played a sell-out concert at the Stables in Milton Keynes in October 2013, three of whom participated in a workshop with our Danish partners the Aarhus Sangskriver Werkstat, a 120-strong songwriting organisation from that town. The winner was Jimmy Brewer
http://www.jimmybrewer.co.uk/
https://smithandbrewer.com/

28/05/2024

Is Jeremy Corbyn standing in Northampton?
Asking for almost all of Northampton.

15/04/2024

I am wondering what colour lippy to wear to the Aortas 3rd Monday Songsquare & Open Mic @ the Garibaldi Hotel tonight. It'll be the usual powder blue eyeshadow and feline-swish mascara, of course. Get all my makeup tips and tricks from that Tik-Tof.

09/04/2024

Ignore the 'insta-merge' post, this is great content and news for travelling songwriters! x

03/04/2024

Aortas 3rd Monday Songsquare & Open Mic @ the Garibaldi Hotel

On March 6th, full of cold, I performed a couple of songs at the VSA - Vienna Songwriting Association's Michaela Singt! event - here's one of them. Hearts and Books. The other is 'Hearts into Diamonds' - I'll upload that to my YouTube channel in a bit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLd9zmKydG0

Lyrics are at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNnFQhXCUM

21/02/2024

Flashback to New Bedford Folk Festival '22 and our encounter with the future.

02/01/2024

True words are rare birds.
Taken from an Aortas website blogpost, New Year 2020.

".......the policy of the Right is, and has always been:

defund, demoralise, disable, and then dispense with public service responsibilities, opening them to profit, to the ultimate impoverishment/cost of the taxpayer.

And this, too, seems to be popular with the electorate, which returned Tories to both local constituencies and the PCC, despite that Party simultaneously managing to bankrupt the town council (repeatedly), have a local PCC found guilty of misconduct in public office, have a local MP step down due to his part in a corruption scandal that saw a publicly-funded £10m loan to the local football club disappear, and do this while cutting local services to the bone......
The governing Party enjoyed roughly 10m popular vote; despite the fact that Labour, the LibDems, the Greens and the SNP enjoyed more than 14m votes between them, they have far fewer than half the seats. This is not Democracy, this is a rigged contest that only electoral reform will ever fix."
Full text:

I now appear to be on a recently-calved south-heading ice floe surrounded by smug idiots regretfully turning up their patio heaters.

10/12/2023

11/09/2023

Some humans have lost all the humans they love as well as what little else they had to begin with.

Earlier today I read this, which another human wrote about loss and death, and it reminded me of some sage words I first heard 50 years ago:

When I die, give what's left of me away
to children and old men that wait to die......

And when you need me, put your arms around anyone and give them what you need to give me..........
You can love me best by letting hands touch hands............
Love doesn't die, people do.
So, when all that's left of me is love,
give me away.....

And the words of fifty years ago?
Can't buy me love, oh, can't buy me love oh, can't buy me love, oh, oh
But it can buy me blankets, shelter, fuel, and food, oh, oh.

You can help reach people affected by the earthquake in Morocco. Donate to the Morocco Earthquake Appeal today.

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+447801796216

Website

http://www.aortas.org.uk/

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Videos

Aortas Open Mic at the Pom

"Make your mind up" excerpt - Here's a sneak preview of what m...

Here's a sneak preview of what might happen at the Aortas Summer Songwriting Workshop 2018. Falsetto, hip gyrations and mob rule.

As crucibles of creativity go: phew, it's a scorcher.

The hall really is great. The Dartington Hall Trust with climate stories helping climate scientists write better songs :)

Mark Owen is also at the aortas open mic. Yes, The Mark Owen.

Barney is at the aortas open mic, which is nice

Spring Song Workshop 2016

Greetz from the song workshop peeps

Aortas Songwriting Workshop – Location, Bursaries and Competition We’re really pleased with our new Northamptonshire workshop venue, and looking forward to the Aortas Spring Songwriting Workshop 2016. For the chance to win one of several prizes including Aortas mugs and T-shirts or £20 to spend on a workshop or give as a gift voucher for workshops or guitar lessons, just do a few things: Share this video (make sure the settings are public) and tag at least one friend in your post; Join / rejoin the mailing-list at http://eepurl.com/Vid7L including ‘video competition’ and the name of the village or rough area of our next workshops – That’s it! Winners will be picked at random from new sign-ups and contacted by email in the first week in May. For more details, including prices, bursaries towards the cost of the workshop, content, and pictures of the venue itself, click on the link!

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Our Story

AORTAS is short for 'Association for Oral Traditions and Songwriting' - Aortas Education Limited was a legal entity between 2011-2019 formed as an umbrella for the activities of Dan Plews (teacher, performer and songwriter) including his work with other musicians. This includes sessions, ceilidhs, songwriting workshops (UK, Austria, Romania, Ireland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Slovenia), private teaching and multiple weekly open mics for songwriters in Milton Keynes between 2010 and 2018. 2011 saw the formation of the pan-european GRUNDTVIG-funded partnership 'Playing for Integration'. Through this partnership with eight other countries AORTAS took UK learners to workshops in 7 different countries. The focus of the workshops was intercultural exchange, writing songs, and the translation of traditional songs from different countries. The process is the product, but we have also produced two songbooks of original and traditional songs which are at www.aortas.org.uk April 2013 saw heats for a Song Competition whose winners played a sell-out concert at the Stables in Milton Keynes in October 2013, three of whom then participated in a workshop with our Danish partners the Aarhus Sangskriver Werkstat, a 120-strong songwriting organisation from that town. Every year since, between four and 8 songwriters from the Northampton/Milton Keynes area have visited Denmark for a four-day workshop. As well as teaching songwriting, music industry and assorted other subjects at Northampton College, as Aortas his clients and partners have included the Universities of Northampton (2019) and Exeter (2018/19) and NERC (2018/19).

2019 was a fallow year for public songwriting workshops but 2020 may not be. Join the mailing list for updates using the ‘signup’ button or visit www.aortas.org.uk