Review of the Cotswold Morris workshop held on 20th March 2022 – a ‘hybrid’ event, attended by around 20 participants in person and 5 on Zoom to reprise various jigs for the coming dance-out season. The workshop was kindly run by the Knights of King Ina (KOKI) jig team in Somerset.
Su Lambert of London Pride Morris Men attended the workshop via Zoom and writes:
“I had a lovely day. Ok, it would have been still more fun if it had been possible to be present, but actually what you managed to achieve for Zoom was pretty impressive!
“The sync was variable at times and honestly one of the highlights was watching Andrew’s iPad dancing ahead of the music! But having all those different angles was invaluable and I specially appreciated being able to watch a side view. Technically you achieved miracles there, apparently without it getting in the way of running the face-to-face workshop.
“I’m immensely grateful to you and all the rest of the team for making the event accessible to those of us who can’t mix at present!
Andrew Knight of KOKI gives these notes about the IT setup for the ‘Hybrid’ workshop:
“We had set up a “box” for the demo to Zoom person to teach from so the Zoom audience could be engaged with and those present could also see and hear themselves being presented to.
“We used devices showing front, rear, side and front upper to view the teacher and placed all this very near the music, original sound on and all participants muted on Zoom, Audio feed from one of the devices only. The hall was visible in one of the views so the Zoom participants could see those in the hall as well. The Hall has a typical country WiFi and Internet speed, not benefitting from city infrastructure that would only improve the Zoom accessibility.
“We covered 15 jigs from 8 Traditions in 4 sessions – and there was cake, there is always cake!
Resources
You can find a large number of videos of cotswold jigs at: KOKI YouTube channel
Plus video: Warming up and Cooling Down for Morris Dancers on the MF YouTube Channel