A Woodend ukulele practice group is gaining numbers and winning hearts, and now they are raising money for insurance to take their songs to the streets.
Katie Yeung is the organiser of Uke Til You Puke and said she started it to help people find connection through music while having fun.
“The exact number of people in the group is not static. We have anywhere from 12 to 20 people come on our monthly uke meetups,” Ms Yeung said.
On the fourth Monday of every month, the group get together at Woodend’s Victoria Hotel and play their favourite ukulele songs.
“It [doesn’t] matter if you [can’t] play the uke, or even if you [play] the uke well, the idea is that we have a huge variety of skill levels and then we just help each other,” she said.
For a little while, Ms Yeung has been chatting to the group about getting some live performances together, like playing at the Woodend Farmers’ Market, or alongside the beloved Woodend Warblers.
The catch? They need public liability insurance, and that costs a bit of money.
She hatched a plan: interested local artists could design a logo which she would upload onto Redbubble for punters to purchase on whatever medium they chose. So far, three artists have created the fundraising works available online.
Ms Yeung is excited for everyone involved to have a go at a gig.
“One of passions is encouraging adults to engage in music even if they’ve been told at some point [they] can’t sing, [or they’re] terrible or they think it’s too hard… I like to make music something that everybody can have access to,” she said.
Elsie Lange
