Making Tracks with young people online

Posted on July 17, 2020 by ittsoundingout in Blog, Making Tracks // 0 Comments

Since lockdown began we’ve found various ways of moving our Making Tracks programme for young people online, made possible with the support of project funder Youth Music, who have been very encouraging of us adapting delivery methods.

Making Tracks: Unity

We’re really excited to share the first set of new tracks created, which the young people titled ‘Unity’. The young people explored a wide range of styles and themes in the songs, including the Black Lives Matter movement, the feeling of being at home, and a nostalgic blast of 1995…

Listen to ‘Unity’ below.

Making Tracks · Unity

Opportunity to be part of Making Tracks this summer

We’re excited to be teaming up with The Prince’s Trust South Region this summer, with an online programme open to young people aged 16-25 based in South-East, South-West and London. The project will include song-writing and music production, starting with a taster session on 28^th July, with the main programme running 4^th-13^th August.

For more info/to sign-up, please contact david.senga.lubendo@princes-trust.org.uk

Earning Silver Arts Award

One of the first online projects to get going saw young people take on achieving a Silver Arts Award. As part of the programme, each participant set themselves an Arts Challenge to create a new track, working with our musicians Lucy and Tom to develop their tunes.

The second half of the project saw the group tasked with creating an offline project that could be delivered in a Youth Offending Institute. They came up with a great concept and challenged Creative Programmes Director Jake, Artistic Director Sara and Community Projects Coordinator Katie to have a go at completing it as a trial run. The project involved writing a song in a particular genre, following a set of well-developed instructions. This led to some great role reversal and some pretty special ‘performances’ by the staff, with a new funk track from Sara, a punchy rock number from Jake and some floaty house lyrics from Katie… sad to say the results were not captured for posterity!

All in all, the project was a great success and proved what can be achieved in these times of lockdown. Here’s what some of the participants had to say about the project:

“It’s been really nice to have something to focus on, something to do for these last 5 weeks. And having a positive outlet as well for things like my writing, like just to bring it all together has been really fun.”

“It’s been a win-win in terms of, obviously we’re gaining a new qualification, we’re expanding our skills, we’re helping other people and we’re just keeping each other company to be honest.”

“It’s given me a goal to work towards because I felt like I was just floating about before doing this, I didn’t really have much to do and I just wasn’t being productive but I feel like I’ve achieved something and I’m really proud of myself and everyone else as well.”

“I’m on furlough right now so I’m trying to be productive and do different stuff, different physical activities and stuff but there’s only so much productivity you can do when there’s nothing to do. And I feel like this was a great thing that kept my mind active and gets me active as well, and just kept me evolving.”

You can listen to Helen’s song created as part of the programme below: