VCAL Students ROCK

 Intermediate VCAL students successfully completed a semester long project. Students were required to negotiate a complex task involving several steps to completion. The group along with their teacher Mr Chris Taylor, decided to organise a battle of the bands competition. While this may sound like an easy task read on before you make a final decision on that.

Most of the first month was taken up with long brainstorming sessions. Students made lists of all the possible jobs that would have to be done. This list came to 35 different tasks such as advertising, security, venue, first aid, bussing throughout East Gippsland, negotiating with Bairnsdale FReeZA,  the East Gippsland Shire and the local Arts network, locating bands to compete, organising the PA system, lighting and the list goes on and on!

Every student negotiated to complete several individual tasks as well as other larger group tasks. Everyone gained valuable experiences doing things they were not originally confident doing. As well a wide range of new skills were learned.

The following comments were made during our post event evaluation by Ryan Peterson. “As a requirement for my VCAL certificate we chose to organise the battle of the bands. During this time I really got to see how much was involved in organising a music event. I enjoyed helping the P A technician and his road crew during the load in, set up and load out sessions. It was a massive job and it was very technical. I have never had an opportunity to do any of this type of work before and I gained allot of personal experience from it. It was a fantastic educational experience!

As one other student commented “I guess what really challenged me was the noise level on the night because I was not used to such loud music. I did get a bit of a headache but it went away the next day!”

Another student stated “  I always used to hate making phone calls to book things. I just never had the confidence I guess. But because I was required to make so many booking it became an easy task to do. After a few lessons on phone technique I was ready to go for it.”

Nearly 300 young people came to the battle. The night went off without any problems. Everyone enjoyed themselves. They were treated to a professional light and sound production and an awesomely organised event by the VCAL students. Things were so successful that FReeZA has asked us to host the Regional final in October.

Perhaps the highlight of the night was seeing Mr. Ash Capes and his metal band perform. We didn’t think a teacher could belt out such a sound!

Prepared by Intermediate VCAL students.