Introduction

Building upon the work and relationships we began at the start of our positive Futures project in Easter, we had returned to the East Oxford Hub to deliver our Summer Music Projects. This summer we have built upon the Arts Award journey the young people began in Easter and progressed them on to an Arts Award Explore project which is the next stage after Arts Award Discover.

Context

Our project partners The East Oxford Hub work with a targeted selection of young people who have been identified as most in need, and we have recruited them onto this project. Youth workers from the hub referred young people from their case loads onto the project and that is how we recruited our young people. Due to this targeted approach we worked with young people with a range of needs and vulnerabilities, but these were young people who otherwise would not get access to music making opportunities outside of school.

The Story

Using Arts Award Explore as a framework for the summer project, James Ottley from The Hub and Jordon Maynard-Daley from OCM planned activities that would support the young people in achieving their Arts Award. We produced a questionnaire which we used as a consultation tool to gauge what sort of project sessions the young people would want to get involved with.

Looking at the activities the young people had shown an interest in, we planned a programme where each week the participants got the chance to work with a different artist who specialised in a specific area of music making chosen by the young people.

Our summer activities ranged from song writing and field recording to junk percussion band skills and music technology. 

Impact on Participants

During this project we had two siblings attend the sessions. Usually at home they would often argue and fight a lot, but on this project we saw them working together and the older brother took time out of what he was doing to help his little sister.

Their youth worker had mentioned that the project had helped them to bond.

Next Steps

Our summer project delivered a great positive experience for the young people involved. The majority remained committed to the project and saw it through to the end and learnt a lot on the way.

We too have learnt a lot through delivering this project and plan to return in the October Half term to deliver an Arts Award Bronze project.

We have decided to focus the next stage of our Positive Futures delivery in working with established groups of young people that the hub support such as the young carers group, who have expressed a keen interest in music.

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