Music Mix Project
I reflect on the social and cultural mix of our young musicians, in the very particular context of Teesside with all its challenges, and how positive the project has been.
I’m the CEO of Tees Valley Arts, a participatory arts organisation based in Middlesbrough and working with communities across the Tees Valley – which, if you don’t know, is the South of the North East.
Our area faces many economic challenges; its industrial wealth was largely based in steel and is now in chemicals, but the number of skilled and well-paid jobs is a fraction of what it used to be, and times can be very hard here.
Although Middlesbrough was built on immigration – mostly Irish, in the nineteenth century – the area has not been very culturally diverse until recently, when a mix of refugee settlement and global movements have meant that Middlesbrough has become the most ethnically diverse local authority area in the North East region.
A mix of history and economics means that this is an area where people in general are not very engaged with ‘culture’, and there aren’t many places to go to be culturally entertained or uplifted, but there is a resilient, northern grit sort of attitude of ‘we’ll do it ourselves’, so it can be a refreshing privilege to work with young people who want to make and perform music, especially when they want to write their own songs.
Our Musicmix project, funded by Youth Music Foundation, was particularly (though not solely) targeted at local young people of diverse origin, who wanted to make progress and enjoy themselves through music, and our participants came from a great mix of backgrounds. Our two music leads were both of African origin, and musically they were very ‘up to date’ (forgive me!) with contemporary music styles and technology, while they also had great skills in helping the young people develop their own individual talents and interests. We encouraged the young musicians to perform in public, to enhance their confidence and self-esteem, and through this we seem to have contributed to the establishment of the ‘Teesside Grime’ crew (a real local movement) and also had a mix of young women from Zimbabwe and from South Bank (a tough area of Middlesbrough) open for Kanda Bongo Man at SageGateshead! One of our young musicians from the host community once said that through taking part in Musicmix she had learnt that 'gaining knowledge was not all bad' which gives you an insight into Teesside attitudes!
This mixing together of cultures is well-established in big cities around the UK, but it remains new in Teesside, so we’re really proud to have contributed to so much marvelous, positive stuff, and we really thank Youth Music Foundation for giving us the chance to help make this happen.
Young people are the future, we all know that, let’s help make that future be musical!