Introducing 1 Blue String

Ally1BS

Hi there Fretboarders.

I'm relatively new around here, I hope you don't mind that I'm jumping in, starting a new thread, but I hope this is something you folks might be interested in. Just to reassure you, I'm not a spambot, I've been playing (or more honestly, torturing) guitars for about 40 years - I've even dutifully joined in the '10 Questions' and 'introduce yourself' threads. I'm looking forward to lurking away many happy hours on these boards, but I won't deny I signed up with a slight ulterior motive.

Amongst various other interests, I am a volunteer with a charity called Survivors Manchester. We provide support & counselling to male survivors of sexual violence, which include many survivors of institutional abuse, prison-rape victims and people living on the margins such as street-based sex workers. So yes, it is heavy subject matter, but please bear with me! 

This autumn we are launching the UK version of an initiative called 1 Blue String.  The project began in the US a few years ago and is based on the statistic that 1 in 6 boys and men will experience some kind of sexual abuse, sexual violence or exploitation in their lifetimes. Our own UK promo video is on its way very soon, but for now, here's a US version that is a wee bit cheesy but explains the idea pretty well.  (Sorry, have tried to do the embedded video voodoo but it is beyond my noobishness for now)

The 1 Blue String project invites guitarists to replace the bass E string of their guitar with a blue one which we provide through the website, then to share a short video, Vine, even just a selfie pic on Youtube, social media etc, use the string at a gig or whatever else they can do to spread the word. You can see loads of examples on the website.       

1 Blue String is an awareness raising exercise, but most importantly it is about telling survivors who can often feel isolated, ashamed or unable to talk to anyone that they are not alone, and pointing them towards organisations who are able to help, whether that is a crisis phoneline, a counselling service, a survivors group where they can meet others who will understand, or whatever they need. We think 1 Blue String is particularly effective because it gets a message into places where these kinds of topics don't normally come up, and reaches people  - particularly younger men - who can otherwise find it really difficult to talk about these topics. So the endgame is really about sharing as far and wide as possible. 

So, why am I here? First of all, just to tell you this is happening and ask for your support.    

More specifically, we'll be officially launching in the next few weeks, and throughout November we hope to be able to share another new 1BlueString video submission every few days. We've already recruited a few willing guitarists, including a couple of famous names, to be part of this, but I'll be blunt, we could do with lining up a few more.

So, here's an offer. Normally we ask people to go through the website to order some strings, and we need to add £4.50 to cover P&P. But if any of you folks would like to volunteer to be in our first cohort, you can contact me directly, give me your name & address and I'll send you the pack completely free. I can probably cover about half a dozen of you at least!  All that I'd ask is that you promise to make us a short video of you playing a little party piece or whatever & either send it to us so we can share it over our platforms or put it on your own Youtube, Facebook or whatever so that we can share the link. 

But I'm also very happy to hang around here for a few days and answer any questions you might have.  

Thanks so much for reading. Over to you!