Discover how Gail Porter spends her Friday nights in lockdown with Disco-In-Furlough from Silent Adventures

LOVE them or hate them, the silent disco tours that delight and infuriate in equal measure as they bop their way down city centre streets have been particularly hard hit during the coronavirus pandemic.

Gail Porter takes part in Disco-In-Furlough

Now organisers of the Capital's largest silent disco operators are hitting back, having struck upon a unique way to bring their feel-good nonsense to a computer screen near you, every Friday evening.

Mat Urey of Leith -based Silent Adventures explains, "Our business relies purely on bringing people together to sing and dance so we have had to put all operations on hold in line with Government advice on social distancing. As all of our guides are self employed performers, none have been officially furloughed. However, we are looking into ways we can support them by providing opportunities to host private online parties for a fee, most of which will go to the guides running the event."

To compliment this approach, another way the Edinburgh company decided to keep their profile in the public eye by taking their product online through a new initiative called Disco-In-Furlough, a free, weekly party on the internet.

Disco-In-Furlough's Director of Dad Dancing

"Disco In-Furlough is a weekly online interactive party with dancing, singalongs and games," says Mat. "It's hosted live by our Director of Dad Dancing, James Longworth, and our experienced disco hosts take it in turns to choreograph iconic songs from across the decades. We play comedy games such as Twerking from Home and It's a Lockout and we run competitions to win tickets to our Silent Disco Adventures. Folk are encouraged to attend in fancy dress with some of the best being spotlighted during the event and there is a live, comedy commentary from James throughout. Each week is different with new sections and surprises."

With many DJs and mobile disco operators already taking to Facebook and social media on a Friday and Saturday night to blast out floor-fillers to their currently disco-deprived regulars, Mat insists that the Disco-In-Furlough concept is quite different to all the others and even boasts one local celebrity as one of its biggest fans.

"There are many reasons Disco In-Furlough is different from anything anybody else is doing at the moment. We have a good mix of music, dancing, singalong, comedy, sketches, games, competitions and interaction. Our latest show included a live chat with one of our biggest fans, Gail Porter. We encourage all ages to attend and join in and each event is completely free. We also have a very high quality technical set up so the production values are extremely good."

He continues, "We are seeing more and more people getting involved each week with hundreds of people from all over the world joining in. Whilst many are new faces, we also enjoy a huge number of people returning week in, week out, with some of them proclaiming themselves our 'biggest fans'.

Disco-In-Furlough on Zoom

"The live text chat stream during each event is incredibly active with people thanking us for putting it together and phrases we see quite regularly are 'Highlight of my week' and 'Best thing since lockdown began'. Our social media sites are rife with such comments as well, so we believe the events are being received with utter enthusiasm and joy."

To take part in Disco-In-Furlough, you need a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer and access to the Zoom either through a web browser or the app. You can then register to receive the weekly Zoom invite by heading to www.silentadventures.co.uk/disco-in-furlough and entering a valid email address. The link to join the event will be sent out every Friday around an hour before the show begins at 6pm.

EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS

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Dance and games are all part of Disco-In-Furlough

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