Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund in 2022

About ‘Creators Not Consumers’

Towards the end of 2021, we received notification from the National Lottery Community Fund that we had been successful in applying for a funding grant of £10,000, to fund our proposed ‘Creators Not Consumers’ project.

This grant enabled us to reconvene the Friday evening sessions (from January 2022) that we had piloted in the Summer 2021 and continue other work, such as the ‘Storming, Forming, Strumming …’ initiative also.

Friday Evening Sessions

These commenced from mid-January (2022) and ran up to the end of March, where a hugely successful ‘sharing celebration’ event showcased the many talented individuals we have involved in our youth music initiative, and also provided a much-valued opportunity for the young musicians to perform in front of friends and family.

We invited back young people that had attended the Summer 2021 pilot and also ran a couple of ‘Taster Day’ events to open up opportunities in order to bring new young people into the project. Despite targeting various school music departments (as well as promoting these on social media), the response to these was disappointing from the 11-17 age group. On the plus side, we did manage to recruit new faces to the sessions (who are still with us now in 2023), and they were well attended by 18+s, which served to help build the team of tutor-mentors and bring more musicians into the group.

By mid-February we had an established group of young people attending and on average had 8 or 9 young people attending every session. In addition, we had 4 or 5 young people (aged 18-25) at every session, providing music mentoring, and teaching various music skills (such as guitar, drumming, keyboards, song-writing). At more recent sessions, a jam has been organised by some of the the tutor-mentors in order for young people to experience playing music with others, feeding their newly-acquired skills into collaborations with peers.

What’s on Offer

  • Group Lessons

  • Music Workshops

  • Music Collaborations and Jams

  • Feedback and Planning

  • One to One tuition

  • Trips out

The Social Aspect of the Friday Evening Sessions

So far we have been able to accommodate all young people that have turned up wanting to join in with our activities, and we pride ourselves in offering sessions that whilst targeted, are welcoming and inclusive to all.

In recent weeks the demand for our provision has become such that we are now ‘at capacity’ and thus need to operate a waiting list, in order to manage numbers.

Most of the young people that attend the Friday sessions generally come along alone, with one friend (or a twin)! The scope to make new friends and mix with a community of like-minded young musicians is particularly attractive to participants.

There is a relaxed social area where young people waiting their turn for lessons/activities can sit, eat fruit or biscuits and drink juice and play games such as Connect 4, Jenga, cards, etc. Here we leave guitars and keyboards (with headphones) for practice also.