ITT awarded Youth Music Recharge Fund support over 3 years

We are very excited to have secured a game-changing grant from the Youth Music Recharge Fund to support us to trial new wellbeing practices to enhance our resilience. The Fund aims to recharge music organisations from the impact of the pandemic and support people to make, learn or earn in music.

ITT has been awarded a grant of £49,760 over a three-year period, which will allow us to explore and embed methods for supporting the wellbeing of our staff. Our most valuable asset is the team of exceptional musicians who deliver our work; carefully selected and trained over the years, they are not only talented multi-instrumentalists and songwriters, but also possess the interpersonal skills needed to engage with our often-vulnerable participants and work effectively with people at all levels of ability. It is therefore vital that we support their continuing development and wellbeing to retain their skills into the future.

Projects made possible by this funding over the next three years include running an annual ‘RnD Lab’ CPD training opportunity for our musicians, sourcing expert facilitators in areas they identify as wishing to have further support in. We will also be able to offer external supervision support to those in the team at risk of experiencing secondary trauma from delivering our work.

The Youth Music Recharge Fund provides vital core funding for small charities and grassroots organisations, and is one of the first national funds with a specific focus on staff wellbeing. The investment responds to research by Youth Music, How COVID-19 has affected youth music making which revealed that 60% of creative organisations needed help with funding and income diversification. A total of £1,793,809 will be distributed to 40 music projects nationwide, thanks to players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

Thank you from all of us at ITT to Youth Music and the People’s Postcode Lottery for this opportunity to develop our wellbeing practices.

Our work making music with young people

ITT has been making music with children and young people as part of the Music in Prisons programme since 1996. In 2012 we expanded our work with young people into the community via the Making Tracks programme, which over the last decade has expanded from projects across London to Kent, Bristol and Manchester. We have also developed special progression projects for young people after taking part in Making Tracks, including Young Producers, our Young Project Leader Training scheme and our new Emerging Artists project in partnership with Drake Music.

Meet our musicians 

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