How I Heart Songwriting Club Grew – Part 2
We began this blog series here. In this Part 2 blog, Founder, Francesca de Valence continues her story:
For 2 years, I Heart Songwriting Club was an email club. 10 songwriters at a time, all writing songs and sharing with each via email. But we had a growing waiting list of people who had heard about the club and wanted to join. We would put on house concerts every quarter. They were themed: the seasons, the elements, holiday events, and we’d do the concerts wherever I travelled throughout Australia or if anyone toured to Brisbane, we would include them.
How the Club Got Its Name
On our first birthday, I named the email songwriting club, I Heart Songwriting Club. The name came about because I had a blog on my music website about Brisbane. It had an image that said “I Heart Brisbane” and I had intended to write a regular blog about all the things I loved about Brisbane. I had written 3 articles and then I stopped. I was blocked in all the ways until I started songwriting regularly. I simply repurposed this blog into a page where I could talk about our songwriting club. I turned the image of I Heart Brisbane into I Heart Songwriting Club, and I wrote about each of our house concerts and workshops that we would put on.
On our second birthday, we celebrated opening our club up to the public in a House concert, and documentary film. Members travelled interstate to celebrate this event with us. It was so joyous. You can watch this 15 mins documentary here:
How I Heart Songwriting Club Became a Business
I never imagined The Club would become a business. I remember having dinner in a sushi restaurant with member, Audra Santa in 2016. I was telling her about my waiting list of 50 people who wanted to join the Club. She said, “Francesca charge people $5 a week and make it a business. And figure out how to include more people, because it’s life changing”
A few months later, at a table at my brother’s engagement party, I sat next to a tech developer and shared how I wanted to make the Club available to more people. He agreed to build the platform for the club.
We opened up to the waiting list in July 2016 and in March 2017, launched the IHSC platform to the public, and within 2 months 100 people had joined.
Career-Changing Outcomes
One year after launching the club platform to the world, multiple albums had been released with songs written in the Club, and on international touring circuits. Including the amazing album from Mama Kin Spender Golden Magnetic which was nominated for an ARIA award and toured 64 dates around the world.
Danielle Caruana (aka Mama Kin) and her mate, Dingo Spender joined the club together right when we opened up the Club to the public – and they joined to get their songwriting fitness back up. They wrote for 20 consecutive weeks, each contributing a song to their group for feedback. After 20 weeks, they had 40 songs between them and the obvious great songs stood out. And 80% of the songs from the album were written in the Club.
“There’s a few moments in my career as a writer that I can go that changed the game and joining I Heart Songwriting Club was one of those moments. Going from feeling that everything had to be worked and worked and worked, into just exercising the muscle with that light touch approach, while building community around it, while getting better at feedback, giving and receiving feedback, and just having to do it week after week after week. What Francesca has created with this Club is a gift to writers and whether you are a really experienced writer or you a total newbie songwriter, there’s something in this Club for you. Everything she puts around it, all the content, the tech, the info, all the assets, you just can’t beat it.” – Danielle Caruana, Margaret River, WA
How the Club Grew
There was so much enthusiasm from our members. They were feeling the impact of writing 10 songs in 10 weeks. They were feeling amazing about writing again.
With this momentum, we expanded our offerings for members and our community. We ran songwriting workshops in person in Brisbane, Park Jam sessions in different local parks around Australia, and a regular beginner songwriting workshop in a homeless shelter. We offered these activities for a few years, experimenting to find the place where we could make the most impact.
IHSC Park Jam Session – Orleigh Park, West End
Songwriter Showcases
Meanwhile, the songwriting club members, all writing their songs inside the online club platform, were building skill and community, were starting to record and release their songs and they wanted more opportunities to expose their songs and grow their audiences.
The Club started to offer performances in more public places around Brisbane – at churches, museums, theatres, and even the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane city, which we showcased regularly on the main stage for 3 years.
IHSC Showcase on the Queen St Mall, Brisbane
Our ABC Radio Segment
One of the media opportunities I co-ordinated to promote an upcoming public showcase, was an interview for our songwriters on ABC radio Brisbane. In that interview, 4 Club songwriters wrote a song live on air in 20 minutes and that was the start of a crazy and super fun radio segment that the Club hosted for 2 years with announcer, Kelly Higgins Devine.
Each fortnight, I would invite 4 different songwriters from the community and bring them together in the ABC studios to play our ‘radio game’. The audience would call in with our songwriting task. Normally in the club, I give everyone a theme and a guideline, and they have 1 hour to write a song by themselves at a time that suits them in the week. But in this radio game, the audience would give us a theme, a word, a genre, a colour, a place, etc, and we had only 20 minutes to write a song together using all of these guidelines, then perform it live on air. It was such a laugh. Songwriting really was fun!!
IHSC ABC Radio show with Kelly Higgins-Devine
Going International
Our events, at this point, were public-facing and this was offering an opportunity for songwriters to perform in amazing venues, grow their audiences and have career-building media opportunities. We were invited to present workshops with different music industry peak bodies, record labels, and at international festivals, like Folk Alliance International, USA; Rio Music Market, Brazil; workshops for APRA AMCOS in Australia and NZ and IMRO in ireland. Then COVID hit…
Francesca speaks at Rio Music Market 2019
