Alison Wormell is “a better musician” for spending time in the great outdoors

BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE

Alison Wormell is a British-Australian bassoonist, film producer, and outdoor enthusiast who uses the pronoun ‘they’. All of these facts are relevant to our story: they are part of the building blocks that form Play Outdoors Productions, which is probably unlike anything you’ve heard of in the music landscape.

POP, as Alison calls it with affection, is an arts initiative bringing non-binary and diverse musicians to the fore. They get together — outside, usually on bicycles — and compose music, make films, and offer a safe space for underrepresented voices to be heard.

In their latest crowdfunding campaign Beyond Words: Combining Film, Music & Bikepacking, these artists raised an impressive $5,389 to support queer composer Mari Funabashi, along with POP founders Alison and Roxanna Barry, on a creative journey across Cymru/Wales. The resulting documentary, they said, will be “key in creating a world where minority voices have agency”.

We asked Alison — who has performed with most Australian symphony orchestras — to tell us more about POP, and what it’s like to set an ambitious musical project in the great outdoors.

Hi Alison! It’s great to chat with you. Tell us, what’s Play Outdoors Productions?

It’s so lovely to chat to you too, Steph! Thanks for having me. Play Outdoors Productions — fondly known as POP — is a music-focused film collective, a platform to lift up underrepresented folk, a supportive community, and a space where the inspiration of the outdoors meets the expressiveness of art music in a playful manner.

Play Outdoors Productions is my brainchild and a dream come true. It originated from a film project I did with Fable Arts, where I rode my bike, shared poetry, and performed four bassoon pieces related to different locations in the south of England. It led me to imagine a space where I could take composers out into amazing, wild places and commission related works, showing the whole process through film.

Additionally, concert halls and classical music can be very alien to many people, with rules — real or perceived — that become a deterrent. Play Outdoors Productions aims to demystify classical music by presenting pieces alongside their associated stories and places, all in a familiar format.

Fundamentally, POP makes short films that bring together the experience of the great outdoors with musical works that express or funnel that experience. It’s a platform where we centre storytelling by underrepresented people to help make classical music more understandable, accessible, and diverse.

So what do you feel the wilderness brings to this creative process?

Everyone, everywhere has some experience of being outdoors. Being outside is a deeply human experience, and everyone has a story about a time when they were somewhere beautiful, haunting, peaceful, or even scary. 

Wilderness areas are uninhabited, often untouched places. They speak to the primal part of us that is designed for green spaces, blue spaces, and to look up the stars to understand how small we are. Wild places are inspiring and universal. Music is similarly woven deep into our souls. 

The experience of being in wild places is extremely powerful when it comes to composition. There are a wealth of experiences to share, and the space to allow ideas to come to you. I think musical works inspired by the outdoors include some of the most enduring and extraordinary pieces there are out there.

Musicians spend a lot of our time inside practising or composing. Practice rooms are brilliant spaces for honing your skills as an instrumentalist – but without inspiration, how can we truly become musicians? How can we express as much of the range of human experience as possible without giving ourselves the chance to be enveloped in it ourselves?

What are some outdoor activities that most inspire you?

Cycling and walking are activities that I find particularly inspiring. There are many other things, but the rhythms of cycling and walking are very close to my heart. 

Cycling particularly, well it makes me feel like I’m flying. It’s like an out of body experience. I can see the landscape in a bigger way, moving faster than walking. I can ride offroad on trails and bridleways through beautiful countryside, focused either on the nitty-gritty of riding or on the overall vistas and feel of the wind rushing past me. I’m particularly lucky because I have a custom mountain bike made by Stayer Cycles, which suits me perfectly. It takes away the feeling of controlling a machine, leaving me with the pure joy of it all. I call her Birdie.

The process of seeing my bike being designed and built, and the joy of riding her, inspired the first film POP produced: Conduits for Joy. It follows Sam (he/him) at Stayer Cycles building bikes, and myself making bassoon reeds. We chat about our creative processes, the pleasure of making things, and how they impart joy. It culminates in a performance of Braun’s Largo for Solo Bassoon.

A huge part of Play Outdoors Productions is the championing of underrepresented voices. Why was it important to you to make this part of the identity of POP?

As a non-binary and disabled person, it’s been life-changing and affirming to see folk like me making music and being outdoors. I also think it’s important that as a white person, I acknowledge my position of privilege, using it to support and pass the spotlight to less privileged folk to the best of my ability.

Additionally, variety is the spice of life! A lot of outdoors media and music is centred around white, cisgender male voices. We’re working to change that narrative by providing a platform to amplify minority voices and thereby increase diversity. By doing so, we’re making the storytelling people have access to more varied and interesting.

This commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices is shown through the core POP team: Roxanna Barry (they/she), Frankie Dewar (she/they), Mari Funabashi (she/her), and Rosie Murrell (she/her). Collectively we include people who are POC, immigrants, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, and disabled. It’s a really special group of people.

So tell us about your hugely successful crowdfunding campaign!

Beyond Words is a 20-25 minute adventure documentary featuring queer multi-ethnic immigrant composer Mari Funabashi. 

We’ll be taking Mari on a three-day bikepacking trip through Cymru/Wales, and commissioning a work for solo bassoon from her about the experience. I’ll then perform the work in the very mountains we rode through. It’ll be filmed and edited by videographer and director Roxanna Barry. I’m so stoked to see this film come to life! […] We’ve received a wonderful grant through the Royal College of Music London for this project, but our crowdfund will ensure everyone involved in the project is paid fairly for their time. It’s also an exciting way to tangibly prove that there is a demand for projects like these.

Before you go, I’d love to know, what do you think fellow arts practitioners could learn from a project like yours?

The biggest thing I hope people learn is that music can’t exist in a vacuum. We are the musicians we are because of our experiences – musical and non-musical. So it’s important to get out there and have them!

I also hope that it encourages people to spend time outdoors, whatever that means to them. And that if folk feel like or know they are different to the people around them, that that is okay. There are people like you out there.

For me, spending time outside tells me who I am. It creates a space where I can truly be myself, and helps me remember and be soothed by my place in the greater world. I can focus entirely on my senses and am released from the critiques of the practice room, the pressure of the concert hall, and the need to achieve. I am better at being myself because of my time outdoors. That in turn, makes me a better musician.

Follow Play Outdoors Productions on Instagram, or visit the team’s crowdfunding page for donations.

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Images supplied.