Who are we?
Mark Jackson (Jack) and Jane Jelbart (Jel) (the bottom left couple) have an international reputation for unique, entertaining and educational ukulele and singing workshops. We also entertain and charm as our duo Jack n Jel.
Our home is in Newcastle NSW, and since 2009 we have built a healthy business where we deliver 8 ukestras and 2 choirs every week of the year. We reckon this is pretty rare, to have made a viable life for ourselves at home as community musicians. Hence we’ve written two books about it. And we provide mentoring to those who wish to know more about what and how we do it.
But we also have had the privilege of delivering ukestration workshops and performing in such diverse locations as Driftpile (Alberta), Portland (Oregon), Opotiki (Aotearoa), Hanoi (Vietnam) and Bendigo (Australia) … and many communities, clubs, workshops and festivals in between.
We like to visit great places and nice people, and to contribute to the musical health of communities and participate in engaging, heartfelt festivals.
Let us contribute to enriching your community improving your musicianship.
Who can we help?
Our experiences at home and abroad have given us the experience and skills to help in a variety of ways. Click the links for the different ways that we might be of use to you.
Ukulele Leadership (The Ukestration Manual and Mentoring)
Ukulele Festivals
Folk Festivals
Ukulele Clubs
UkeClubless communities
We enjoy touring new places and dropping into ukulele clubs to tune up their skills. And of course we enjoy festivals, both uke and folk.
Running numerous weekly ukestras and choirs as our profession since 2009 has really honed our teaching skills. Thus we frequently hear comments such as …
… in all my years of being a member of xyz ukulele club, I have never learned as much as I did in the last 90 minutes …
We have taught in a diversity of demographics and cultures…
from ages 6 to 90 plus,
from teenagers with cancer to mental health patients,
from one person to 300 plus
from Vietnam, to outback Australia, to far northern Alberta.
We also regularly attend to our own professional development needs, and were the first Australians to undertake the three years of training (in Vancouver) in the James Hill Ukulele Initiative. On top of that we are catalysts who have organised professional development opportunities in Australia for uke leaders and teachers from across the nation.
In May 2018 we released two books on:
Being an effective community musicians using Ukestration and the Ukestra method;
The Business of Being a Community Musician.
We now train others (Australia, New Zealand, USA) in how to teach ukulele in a fun and informed fashion, with the ultimate goal of teaching musicianship, rather than teaching ukulele alone.
Read more about that at