Inspired Not Tired. Trinity Laban’s programme of music and dance activities for older adults
(2011 – present)
Commissioner: Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
Role: Facilitator / Mentor
Inspired not Tired is Trinity Laban’s flagship programme of music and dance activities for older adults based in southeast London. As music leader with the programme since its inception, Natasha collaborates with participants and other artists to create site-specific projects for Tate Exchange, Horniman Museum, Maritime Museum and local festivals. Intergenerational collaboration is a strong focus of the work, offering projects at schools and mentoring opportunities for music and dance students in collaborative community arts practice.
The Befrienders
The Befrienders are a social singing group for older people run by Ageing Well Lewisham in partnership with Trinity Laban. Natasha leads the group in composing original material and presenting interactive performances at local events and festivals. The Befrienders perform annually with vocal students from Trinity Laban in Spring Forth, presenting a programme of their own devising including material created in collaboration with the students. They also participate in an annual devising project with students from Deptford Green School in response to the Blackheath Halls Community Opera.
Recent highlights include recording an ep of original songs, performance as part of a 200 strong group in the Finale of Lewisham’s Age Against the Machine festival of older people’s arts and flash mob performances of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.
Recipe for a Good Life.
Recipe for a Good Life was recorded on 30th January 2017 at Blackheath Halls. The EP includes 2 original songs by members of the group ('If You Can Breathe' by Cynthia Dunn and 'What! You Too?' by Avril Sydee) along with a cover of The Beatles 'In My Life' and a 'Recipe for a Good Life' with lyrics and words written and spoken by The Befrienders, set to the music of Burt Bacharach.
Voices in Motion
Dance artist Bethan Peters and vocalist Natasha Lohan lead this group of Lewisham based older artists. Merging elements of vocal and movement improvisatory techniques, the group explores major themes affecting their lives, devising site-specific performances that work to activate and include their audiences. The group participates in Trinity Laban’s annual CoLab festival of collaborative creativity, devising and proposing projects at Tate Exchange and The Queens House, Greenwich. Their most recent project offered students the opportunity to question how arts practices might help us work through issues surrounding the Climate Emergency.
As part of A Proposal for Radical Hospitality (2020), the group participated in online workshops exploring the legacies of colonialism inherent in the Armada portrait of Elizabeth I. Their vocal improvisations were captured through a call and response recording session using video-conferencing technology linking the group singing from their homes into the Queens House. The resulting soundscape by sound artist Peter Adjaye was installed in the Queens Presence chamber in Sept 2020.