For many years we at NIBGA have offered free instrument workshops at all our festivals. These workshops attempt to cover all the usual bluegrass instruments, guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, bass and occasionally dobro, songwriting and harmony singing. These workshops are all conducted by volunteers, either members of performing bands or by NIBGA members.
The workshops are limited to ½ hour each on Saturday mornings for several reasons:
* Limited space available to conduct the workshops in that time frame.
* Volunteers are usually working on a tight schedule.
* Participants prefer to complete the workshops before the stage performances begin.
* Some participants are not at the festival on Friday.
* Some don’t want to conflict with Sunday morning church service.
These workshops, of necessity, are “one size fits all”, with the leader having to teach a generic course. This leads to half the participants being unhappy.
* We have had comments like “I didn’t learn anything because it was too basic” or “It was too hard and the instructor was over our heads”, and this was from two people in the same workshop! Also, it is difficult to teach or learn much in ½ hour.
It is becoming apparent that a better approach would be to have fewer workshops but targeted toward specific ability levels like “Beginner”, Intermediate” and “Advanced”. These would be one or two hours long and require a fee of $5 or $10. There would probably be two such workshops at each festival with the instruments and ability levels rotating. If more instructors and added facilities could be made available this could be expanded.
This probably would not be satisfactory to those folks who like to attend all the workshops but should be an improvement to those with specific needs.
This is a work in progress and not meant to be a final solution. Accordingly, your comments and suggestions are welcome.
Dave Vogie
Workshop Chair
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