I feel very privileged to have been given a grant to attend Directors College and I intend to make full use of this opportunity. After attending Harmony College 2007 and doing the directing stream there, it seemed obvious that the next step would be to improve these skills in order to do a better job in my new found roles, both in the Ivy League and my chorus, the Abbey Belles, from Selby, as assistant director and co-section leader. This weekend has given me valuable experience and skills and has been a fantastic opportunity, not only for meeting new people and making new friends, but to improve myself.

And so, the weekend started with dinner, followed by the key note speech and meeting our group leaders and groups for the first time. Rhiannon was our coach and she made us think about what we wanted to achieve over the weekend in more detail than 'I want to learn how to conduct', and it let us know just what we had let ourselves in for. I found this very useful as it made me realise, listening to the others goals just how many gaps there were in my knowledge.

Saturday morning dawned bright and early, for some it seemed earlier than others! And after breakfast and an initial timetabling session, we had our second group meeting, from which I learned much. Firstly we went through the aims and goals of the group and were then coached on our videos. It was useful to get such positive feedback from the rest of the group as well as Rhiannon and never having seen myself conduct, it was a very useful exercise as I could see where to improve just by watching. It was also interesting to be able to watch Rhiannon coaching the others in my group and, having to be coached in front of others, although out of the comfort zone, made me work harder. We were given the opportunity to conduct the rest of our group and so coming out of this one session I already felt I had improved with some experience and practice and felt as though I had learned a whole new style of directing, or least the basics of it which I can now take away to practice and improve upon.

In the last session of the day we had the delegate chorus which was a really good opportunity, not only to sing, but to watch Rhiannon being coached by Royce Ferguson, our guest coach. By the end of the session he had transformed the chorus and it sounded amazing.

Sunday morning dawned and started by watching Royce warm up the choruses and quartets that had come to be guinea pigs for our conducting. Thankfully my slot for conducting the chorus was near the beginning of the day or I would have turned into jelly by the end. What I found best was that everyone was very supportive and it was great to conduct the Belles of Three Spires as they were all so smiley and encouraging and really gave 110% back to me, despite having to sing the same three words over and over again. The videoed coaching session was really useful and I gained much from it, especially the feedback session after, which, again just from watching myself I was able to see how to improve myself. Rhiannon was an amazing coach and was so encouraging. I now feel so much more confident about standing in front of the chorus to direct and more importantly, look forward to it and feel like I know what I am doing and how I can improve myself further.

However, it was not only directing that we learned about this weekend. We had sessions about the leadership and management of the chorus as frontline directors with Neil Watkins, Cherry Hartshorn and Mike Taylor, critical analysis with Royce Ferguson, and a seminar on presentation by Derek Davis, which I found really interesting and it gave me an insight into presentation judging which is something I would be interested in doing in the future. The weekend was so enjoyable and gave me such a confidence boost, thanks you, I can't wait until the next one!!

Catrina Lakin