Starting a Uke Meet up

johnEuchre

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Hello all! I have aspirations of starting a Uke Meet Up in my city. To my knowledge, there isn't one yet. But I could be wrong. I'm not even a year into playing, but love it very much.

How does one start such a thing?
 
First, find a location that can handle a couple of dozen people and will let you return on a regular basis. You may not get that many to attend, but it's better to have too much room than not enough.

Churches, YMCAs, or community centers work for this purpose, but you may have to pay a modest rental fee. Our jam is held in one of the classrooms at a church. They don't charge us (a member of the church is one of the regulars), but we always leave a "love offering" for the use of the room. Each person who contributes usually throws in $5 or $10. Renting space may cost you $50 or more.

After you reserve the space (you've had to set a date by now) advertise on MeetUp or Craigslist or in a local weekly entertainment paper. Encourage people of all ages and all abilities to attend. Ask them to bring music stands if they have them. Set aside a couple of hours for the meetup. You may spend most of your time introducing one another, but that's OK.

Then, put together songs to play. You might want to use "The Daily Ukulele" or just put together a couple dozen songs you've gotten from uke sites, make copies, and put them in binders.

And then make it a regular event. Ours is the first and third Thursday of each month, 7-9 p.m. Once you get some consistency in the schedule, more people tend to come.

Those are the basics. I'm sure others can offer more detail.
 
Try your local library (that's my "day job") because most have community meeting rooms for residents. You may have to fill out an application and there could be restrictions (no food, etc) so just ask!
 
Okay, I tried to do this about three years ago. I got a coffee shop to let us meet on a Saturday evening. I put out fliers everywhere, old school, with my phone number in case anyone had questions. I'll admit that I did not go to craigslist or meetup, and I probably should have, but I didn't. When the time came, only one other ukulele player showed up. But about thirty people without ukuleles showed up to listen. It was my very first gig. The other fellow with a ukulele was experienced and had been in a couple of bands, and frankly, he thought we were there to do a coffee shop gig and that I was looking for someone to stand in. Anyway, baptism by fire. It was a great and started me off on a road that I never imagined I would be on. But I have tried to get something going like that a couple of times, but each time I don't get any ukulele players but I do get lots of people who show up to watch. I'm not trying to talk you out of it, I'm just telling you what happened to me. Good luck. I hope that it works for you
 
john,
TBUS, the 3rd or 4th largest uke club in America, was built on public media. We have over 1700 members on Meetup.com. We have about half that on Facebook.
The best advice I can give you is to not place high expectations on other people. I've "recruited" lots of really excited people, only to never see them again. I am closing down our 3 year old jam session after October, we have too many events now, and it is no longer well attended.
On to something else!
 
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