Yo Radio! Lancashire
17.9.2015
This project is now complete – thank you to everyone for the support!
Youth Music – Summary
Prior to beginning the work in year 2, meetings took place with two separate organisations who were already actively working with young people in the local community – the Young Peoples service (YPS) and The Youth Zone in Blackburn town centre.
We worked closely with the two organisations and developed the sessions based on feedback they had received from young people and a local primary school, and sessions were delivered based around the children’s current curriculum – giving the teachers a chance to see how music could be used to teach and engage the students in a creative and participatory way.
We enabled the young people the chance to express and develop themselves both personally and creatively and have created links between organisations and bonds between young people based on the appreciation of each other’s respective talent that can be developed further.
Like many northern Mill towns Blackburn suffers from inter estate rivalry, we aimed to challenge this by delivering sessions at two separate locations some closed to specific groups to enable the workers to build relationships and others designed to encourage the mixing of different groups and musical abilities. This culminated in a two day project working with a diverse group of young people resulting in a final performance at the Zone.
“The project was a great success, with the young people involved feeling a lot more confident in their ability to perform and keen to push themselves further. It was great to have young people from another youth centre here for the final week of the project and in some ways it might have been nice to do something similar earlier on in the project.”
(Sarah Johns / Youth Worker @ The Zone)
“We work with young people who have anger management issues and a high percentage are not in main stream education. They have a short attention span, drug use is prevalent and sadly, a lot of the young people live in in the Higher Croft area, one of the most deprived areas in England. The Youth Music team worked with a core group of between 6 – 8 young people, and considering the work space, this was a real achievement! The group enjoyed the sessions; they felt at ease and gradually grew in confidence. They wrote their own lyrics and beats and managed to create two original songs.”
(Alan Garvin / YPS worker @ Kaleidoscope)
“A very clear progression regarding self-esteem and confidence was clear for all to see as creative expression grew from nervous beginnings to confident end performances. After their first stage shows they even wanted to perform again. The group of young people discussed their journey once the event had finished and were so proud of each other, hugging, patting on back etc.”
(Lee Abbott (Seek the Northerner) / Music Leader and Youth Worker)
Through the contacts we made at Kaleidoscope, we were able to complement and support three ‘Dig It’ events based at King George Hall in Blackburn town centre. These under 18 band nights gave the young people who practiced at the centres the opportunity to perform to their peers. We supported these nights by assisting with the purchase of equipment and signposted young people we had worked with during the project to attend and perform at these events.
“A highlight was Dion and Sophie performing live at a music event we hold for young people, there were approx. 100 in attendance. Friends and family attended and everyone was wowed by their performance”
(Alan Garvin / YPS worker @ Kaleidoscope)
We have been notified by YPS that further funding has now been found to continue the ‘Dig it’ events for May and August 2015. Through delivering sessions at these venues we aimed to increase the level of participation in music based activities through developing young people’s skills in creating and expressing themselves through music and provided training to two volunteers at the youth Zone to enable them to continue to deliver music sessions to their peers in the future.
“Each of the artists was fantastic at working with young people and they all really appreciated the time each of them dedicated to their personal development. Tayyib and Nathan both gained a lot from being involved in delivering the sessions, particularly for Nathan working with Seek on song writing. The training they are going to attend at SSR on music production and remixing will be a great help to their development as workers and their ability to teach young people new skills. The course will give them experience of working on a range of music production software, build their confidence in musical composition and increase their skills in remixing and re-editing tracks. This link is something that as a result of the project I am now picking up with Jon McCaughey and the Blackburn Music Hub to ensure better pathways between organisations are created so that young people can access different approaches to making music and different genres.”
(Sarah Johns / Youth Worker @ The Zone)
You can also read more by clicking on the Yo Radio link here
