About
The Weekend
Your weekend runs Friday to Sunday and includes comfortable accommodation and delicious meals from Friday dinner to Sunday lunch. Registration begins Friday evening at 5pm, followed by dinner, a welcome orientation, a concert, and a singalong. Enjoy a weekend full of specially designed workshops, one on one mentoring, creativity, singing, music making and community building. The weekend ends Sunday afternoon with a final participants concert and departures at 3:30pm.
Whether you’ve always wanted to sing but haven’t given yourself the chance, or you’ve been writing songs and singing for years and want to hone your skills, Women’s Music Weekend is for you. Whatever stage you’re at, you will be supported and guided to explore your musical side.
Choose from workshops such as:
freeing the voice- lyric & melody writing
- jamming
- guitar techniques
- how to sing harmony
- ukulele
- vocal improvisation
- circle singing
- restorative yoga
- performance techniques
Join the weekend chorus, play in a pick-up band, write your own song, or share a song in the open mic or song circle. The offerings vary each weekend, but Women’s Music Weekend will always have a range of options for you.
If you need to unlock your voice, heart-opening yoga or movement sessions can help dissolve the blocks to your singing. Lyric writing workshops focus on connecting your creative voice to what is in you, and around you.
If you’re tentative about making music, we’ll help you go inside to experience that great joy in music you’ve always longed to find.
If you’re up for a good challenge, we’ll find the part of your music-making that could use a little shake-up. No matter what, Women’s Music Weekend will inspire and ignite your musical passion, with different guest musicians to offer new workshops each time.
Whatever your age, musical ability or background, come and create, share, listen, learn, play, harmonize, heal, and sing with us!
Our Story
In 2012, Jane Lewis, Katherine Wheatley, and Linda McLean came up with the vision to provide women the opportunity and the encouragement to make music together, share their voices, build confidence, and explore musical areas that might be new to them, such as playing an instrument, singing in a choir, songwriting, or performing.
Here is their backstory:
When we first explored the idea of Women’s Music Weekend, we were each independent musicians with an accumulated history of different but complementary musical and teaching experiences. The key ingredient that brought us together was our desire to share our mutual love for singing and songwriting.
Our first weekend sold out quickly, so we offered a second weekend and that one filled up too. After those two “experiments,” we couldn’t help but be excited by what had just happened. As we knew, once could be an accident, twice could be lucky, but three times and we’d know we were onto something. So we offered a third weekend a year later, and the results were as miraculous as the first two.
The event has evolved over time, but the consistent elements of the weekends are easier to see now. We’ve stayed true to our aim to develop a program where women feel safe and supported to open up and share their musical fears and dreams.
Our ethos translates into an atmosphere where everyone steps up to support one another. For example, we’ve seen how one woman who wants to sing a song but doesn’t play an instrument soon finds someone to accompany her. Or someone who is new to writing songs finds a more experienced songwriter to answer her questions. There is a self-balancing that occurs, where needs are met by the community, intuitively and organically, and adjustments happen in the moment, as needed.
We continue to be inspired by our “Women’s Music Weekenders” as we like to call them. They’re so brave. Some women want to sing one year, and write a song the next year. Some want to perform for others in the open mic session, and others prefer to participate in the group singing activities and make connections with other women. Some people want to write a brand new song every year to share at the final performance. We’re determined to keep the focus of the weekend on community, learning, support, growth, and joy.
Our vision has continued to grow. Our community continues to grow and has enthusiastically embraced and supported new ideas, such as the Bursary Fund. And our list of ideas continues to grow! We’re looking forward to seeing what evolves as we move forward together.
