Looking for a skill for your Duke of Edinburgh award? Try the ukulele!

The Duke of Edinburgh award scheme is all about setting yourself challenges and how you develop your skills to achieve them and cope with any obstacles on the way.

The ukulele is an excellent instrument to learn and no prior experience is needed. It may not seem like a life skill in itself but you will learn – perseverance, kindness to yourself, recognising your successes, self-confidence and last but not least – having fun!

Challenges may include :

• You may be starting from zero experience – how challenging is that! This makes it an ideal D of E skill as fairly quickly you will build your skills, and the confidence will follow.
• Fear of making a mistake – we all make mistakes. The trick is to recognise is it, accept it and work out how to overcome this.
• All fingers and thumbs? – there aren’t many instances in life where we have to think about what to do with individual fingers and thumbs. So no instrument comes naturally at first. One week you’ll struggle with a chord or a strum, the next you’ll have moved on to a new challenge, maybe without noticing.
• Shyness – so many people admit to this, including some who you wouldn’t describe as shy! It can be daunting to have to make a noise in front of someone else, e.g. a tutor or a friend. But once you’ve done it a few times you soon realise it’s not the end of the world when you mess up. I never sang before playing the ukulele, now you can’t stop me!

So give it a go. You get to try a new skill and who knows it might lead to other instruments.

Just phone, email or text me for a chat or details.