Who are we listening to this week? Caroline Murphy!

Caroline Murphy AKA Virginia Haze is a Singer Songstress Home grown in Liverpool. She has been a prominent Singer/Musician in the City for the past 30 years, working with many bands as well as teaching young people to sing, write songs and play instruments.  In 2004 she launched her solo career under the name Virginia Haze, releasing her debut album “Genuine“in 2005.   

Her Journey into Community Arts has always been interlaced within her own musical career. At aged 19 she took a job as a music worker in Gateacre Youth Centre and continued on the path to becoming a qualified Youth and Community worker. She spent 20 years as a full time Community Music Worker for the Liverpool City Council as well as doing freelance work for LIPA,MZONE,  Schools , Youth Centres, teaching in Europe and many other organisations. She focussed supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds , using music as a tool to improve their confidence and mental health and also create opportunities in order for them to reach their full potential. 

You can listen to her song, Whats Goin On here:

How we met…

Before LIPA had become the august colossus it now is, complete with a footprint which straddles the Mount, Hope and Duke Street triangle, the brains and brawn behind the operation occupied several portacabins, parked precariously on the building site from which the LIPA we know and love slowly metamorphosed. 

 In those days, there was much concern about how LIPA would engage with its local communities and several myths grew up alongside the newly unfolding building, many of which were to do with access to the organisation’s courses and activities.  It was an “elite school for foreign students” ran one meme; a “FAME school” ran another and not far behind in that meme race was the notion that it didn’t give a proverbial fuck about its local communities across the wider city region. One of the first things the brains and brawn did in the early days to counteract these memes was to set up the Community Liaison Team. This pan-organisation body soon became known by its acronym, CLT: but this was soon dropped when it became apparent that it had a rather unfortunate pronunciation (if you were squeamish about that sort of thing).

These memes all ran their course over time, and truth finally outed as it tends to do.   Before too long though, LIPA had recruited a healthy percentage of local students’; it contributed significantly to the local economy and cultural ecosystem; and its work in the wider communities across the region was recognised and appreciated, although perhaps not as visibly or audibly as some of us would have liked.

One way we did that was by running several years of ‘Pathways’ projects in local schools and communities in which local artists would be engaged in schools, often working with the most disengaged young people, in order to bring some inspiration and opportunities to their lives.  One of those projects was run by the musician, Caroline Murphy, who we engaged to work with young people in Brookfields Comprehensive in Kirkby. Caroline worked in the school over several years and over time developed life lasting relationships with the young people she tutored.  But it wasn’t all plain sailing:

“Before my first music session, the teacher said there are music instruments in the room . It was a box of percussion! The kids had already opened it and started banging the hell out of it. I said OK let’s start now, but they kept on. I thought what can I do? So I got a book and pulled a chair out and started reading it. Eventually after quite a while someone said, ” What you doing Hippy?”  so I said I was reading my book. I’m getting paid to teach you music, but at the moment I’m getting paid to read my book . They started asking me questions like “do you live in a caravan?” and in the end, I ended up having a great time with those kids. They had all never played an instrument before  but after working with them, they played at the St George’s Hall.  One of the girls, Marie was so nervous she ran out the hall barefoot and down the steps before their slot. I had to go after her and persuade her to come back.”

Whilst the work was initiated under the Pathways scheme, it was so successful that the school also kept her on after it finished for a couple of years in order to help address the behavioural challenges the school faced. In many ways, this work was a precursor to the work of Creative Partnerships in the region in the years to come, although we didn’t know it then.  But it was yet another testament to the power of arts and culture for young people; and the song below that Caroline saved from those years back, tells you a little of their lives, challenges and ambitions.