Participant Case Study

"If it wasnt for this project, I dont know what I woud have been doing"

Hakeem Balogun

A singer songwriter who initially got involved in our Music drop in activities because he had nothing else to do. Hakeem is a talented young person who due to citizenship challenges and the location where he lives he struggled with getting involved in projects and workshops. This affected his mental health, self esteem and even enthusiasm in wanting to do music anymore.

After a period of time coming to our drop in workshops,  he signed up to our music traineeship project to develop both his musical and employability skills but more importantly to increase his engagement in music further. 

As a result of this project Hakeem has now completed a Gold Arts Award. Learnt project management skilling including delivering an open mic event for the community. He has als released his first ever EP and even volunteered for Manchester International Festival. We aim to continue working with him and supporting him on both his music and non music related issues . We feel that Hakeem is a perfect canditate to become a peer mentor for future projects but also a pleasent person to emply/work with.

“During his time with the production team, Hakeem helped the technicians on a theatre show called ‘When It Breaks It Burns’ at Powerhouse Library. The technicians showed Hakeem all the elements of the technical setup for the show, including the sound, lighting and video setups and explained all the signal paths and operation of the equipment. Hakeem was then shown how to create a show file on the lighting desk and made his own lighting cues, and the same on QLab with sound and video cues. He also learnt how to map images from the projector, using the QLab software. He then stayed to watch the show’s evening performance. During his last day with us, Hakeem helped the technicians do the “get out”, dismantling and taking down all the technical equipment from the show, ready to be loaded into the van to take away. Hakeem was very helpful, eager to learn and fast at picking up what the technicians taught him.” Alex Willy Head of Productions.

"Hakeem is a pleasure to work with, very talented and very humble. It is people like him that validate what we do and who we do it for"

Sam Malik; Projects Manager