Cardboard Citizens Youth Led project Music Lab
Music Lab the Succesfull Youth Led Music and Spoken Word project for young people affected by homlessness and other marginalised groups.
Music Lab
Music Lab is a youth led Music and Spoken word project delivered over 12 week as part of Cardboard Citizen’s young people’s programme Act Now. We specialise in working with young people affected by homelessness, who are NEET or from other marginalised backgrounds. Whilst our focus has always primarily been theatre, Act Now developed Music Lab in 2015 in response to the common interest many of our young people had for music and spoken word. We've found that music, out of all the arts, is the most accessible and engaging creative form for our young people, many of whom have tremendous talent and potential but are limited in their opportunities due to their challenging life situations. Many of our young people struggle to commit to an ongoind workshop due to the unpredictable nature of their lives. However, with music and spoken word, the sense of reward and achievement can be instantaneous; we can work on and refine a track or performance over a series of workshops but equally can make a killer track within half an hour.
The young people who participated in Music Lab had the opportunity to develop their creative music making skills alongside their peers, meet industry professionals and work on their own individual musical pieces. Over the 12 week course we worked with a number of diverse artists including Young London Poet Laureate Caleb Femi, Grime Artist Koder, and rapper award winning rapper Shay D coming along for the ride, with our lead workshop leader Rahel Debebe Dessalegne taking us through the project. The master classes encompassed everything from music production to discussions on gender relations. It was really great to see how our workshop participants benefited from working with an array of artists, artists who were relevant to them in age, experience and background.
We wanted to work in a focused yet flexible manner for young people to get the most out of the process even if it was on more of a drop in basis. While we were building up to putting on our own showcase and open mic night at the end of the term we also had regular sharings at the end of each workshop, this helped get our young people ready and also gave them a good amount of short term achievements to boost self-esteem and confidence. This also developed a comfort around each other and diffused anxiety going forward when sharing, it was a very supportive environment where praise and constructive feedback where given hand in hand. This open discussion on what could be improved helped the quality of the young people’s work and led to our participants teaming together to organise a successful and thoroughly entertaining showcase at the end of the project.
With a focus on working collaboratively and building a trusting and supportive space, the young people experimented with different skills and musical forms and shared their work with each other each week. Through this process, participants developed their confidence to perform as well as soft skills such as listening, communication, resiliance and team work. Our pastoral team were on hand each session to offer one to one Information Advice and Guidance sessions to those members experiencing challenging circumstances to ensure that barriers to participation were minimised and participants could fully engage, on a creative and personal level.
Conrad Barnes-Worrell Music Lab Manger
Anyway that’s enough from me I’m now going to hand it over to Ben Usher, Music Lab participant and Young Member Representertive. Take it way Ben!
Looking back on Music Lab and I’m struggling to condense all that I have experienced to be able to share it with you, from writing spoken word through different techniques and workshops, performing at an open mic and organising and hosting the showcase event. When I first heard about Music Lab I was immediately interested as both an artist and also as the young members representative as it sounded like the perfect opportunity to refresh my writing and performance skills, I entered with an open mind as I was not exactly sure what to expect apart from 12 sessions over 12 weeks …. It was fantastic from the start, the first meeting we had involved a lot of ice breakers and getting to know the rest of the group and the overall low-down on what to expect in the coming weeks and that we were working towards a performance to showcase what we had produced during Music Lab, as well as educational opportunities i.e. Arts Award and PEARL, which I didn't hesitate to get involved with as it was free and we were given all the advice and guidance needed to complete them. Over the following sessions we started work on our individual performance pieces, which was interesting as it included many different art forms, song writing, poetry, musicianship, dance and rap! We were guided through this process through different writing techniques taught by our facilitator - Rahel and were also visited by outside industry professionals like Koder and Caleb Femi, who taught us their unique writing and performance styles. The overall quality of the workshops definitely surpassed my expectations as a free workshop, gaining essential soft skills for my craft i.e. a guest facilitator Koder, taught us a crash course on how to use software to create and record your own material and also the knowledge and experience I had access to through their experienced facilitators (Rahel and Conrad). There were so many parts of this course that I enjoyed, the weekly showcases where we could track everyone's process and give feedback for the next session, I got to perform my spoken word piece at an open mic event at Rich Mix which was good practise for showcase and organising the showcase itself from decorating the venue to hosting the event itself!
Ben Usher
The annual project which is Music Lab will be returning this September but in the meantime, feel free to check out our new performing arts Young People’s Theatre project we’re doing in collaboration with grime inspired theatre company High Rise https://cardboardcitizens.org.uk/events/act-nows-arts-lab .