by Author BICo

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Women Making Music: The Beautiful Music Collective Project

For the last year Beautiful Ideas Company (BICo) has been supporting some amazing professional and emerging women musicians, industry and music education professionals in Salford including those work ing out of Islington Mill, like Fat Out, Samarbeta and Sounds from the Other City (SFTOC) to develop a workforce mentoring programme for individuals and the wider NW Music sector.

This group of talented women has been supported to work with local girls and young women just beginning their own music-making and creative journeys.  Together we developed a bespoke training and mentoring plan that engaged and supported the female workforce and emerging talented female musicians to take their skills to the next level as well working with them to lift their individual professional profiles and that of females in music across the North West as a whole.

We celebrated the culmination of our ambitious project with with some fantastic performances as part of this year’s Sounds from the Other City Festival in May. Made by music lovers for music lovers, the festival is a celebration of new music and performance, featuring the very best emerging and underground talent from the local, national and international scene. The line-up of more than 130 of the most exciting, emerging names in new music, performance and art was selected by the roster of amazing promoters - many of whom mentored on our programme.

“A CELEBRATION OF INDEPENDENCE – ***** (5 STARS)”

The Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/festivals/sounds-...

Rivca Burns is a Freelance creative producer, Director of SFTOC and of music residency program, Samarbeta and Manchester After Hours. She has worked in the music industry for the past 10 years in various roles within venues, record labels, festivals and PR companies including Islington Mill, Future Everything, MIF, Manchester Pride & AND Festival. Rivca mentored a number of local girls and young women on our programme and said ‘ It has been a fantastic programme - been amazing to be able to mentor local Salford girls who are interested in a career in music or promotion. We need more of this kind of programme. ’

Justine 17, a local young woman from Salford who attended sessions at Islington Mill said ‘ I wasn’t that motivated to learn an instrument or sing in the choir. I got interested in promoting music events so this course has been great for me.’ 

Another highlight was the SFTOC BBC PHILHARMONIC STAGE @ SALFORD CATHEDRAL    

Continuing a special partnership with SFTOC, after a series of workshops with local girls an ensemble of players from the BBC Philharmonic returned in 2018 at Salford Cathedral joining forces with composer, performer and provocatrice, Laura Bowler, and acclaimed Mancunian visual artist Rachel Goodyear for an audio-visual collaboration that was a stand out moment.

For more information please go to:-                  www.beautifulideas.com                   www.soundsfromtheothercity.com        www.samarbeta.co.uk