Recycling things to make music

Drumming workshopAs I mentioned earlier in the month, it’s the ‘Recycle Into Art’ week of workshops in Liverpool this week.

The event kicked off with a musical event at St Luke’s Church – aka the Bombed Out Church – on Friday afternoon. It was led by Urban Strawberry Lunch, a music/arts group who make instruments out of waste items. Some of them are literally drums – old plastic drums of different sizes which are hit with sticks to produce sounds – while others are considerably more tuneful.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Liverpool a bit later than we’d hoped and had to get some lunch so couldn’t really take part in the workshop in the church gardens but those who were involved looked to be having fun (above).

Church bells made from old car wheelsWe did get to have a play on the other USL instruments inside the former church itself though – mostly notable an instrument made out of old hollow piping (different lengths made different notes that sounded like a bass synthesizer) and the “bells” in the church tower – made from suspended old car wheel rims. We gave the “bells” a really good bashing, leaving my ears ringing afterwards too ;)

Unfortunately none of the videos we made did justice to the sound of the “bells” – it was very cool and loud – but here’s John playing the pipe instrument thing:

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2 Responses to “Recycling things to make music”


  1. janice says:

    recycling is a very good thing to do its a good way to help the enviroment

  2. Ashley Moore says:

    I think recycling is stupid , to be perfectly honest . If something’s trash , throw it away . If it’s broken , place it in the garbage can . Recycling is just another way of keeping old , raggedy objects away from being put in it’s rightful place . Garbage is gasrbage . Who wants to know that the instruments they’re drumming , banging or even blowing on was recently pulled out of a dump and “cleaned”. You never know what type of germs you could be carrying around on an old , dusty , dirty , “needs-to-be-thrown-away-” tin can that someone calls a “drum”. It’s dumb and a waste of time . Think about it . The more we recycle , the more money we spend on unecessary boxes and buckets we have to build in order to keep our garbage and “recycled items” seperated . Just more tax dollars , which means more money being taken out of our pockets for something useless . It’s like the Electric Car . Who wants to make sure their car is charged every night , walking on egg shells , not completely knowing if your car is fully charged to take you to your destination ? Why not just go to a local gas station and pay for gas like a normal person ? We don’t care about the air like we say we do . We really don’t. We just go with whatever some big company tells us to believe and label that as our “opinion.” The world’s going to end anyway . Let’s not try to save something that already has an expiration date .



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