IT'S HARD TO THINK OF THE FUTURE - Story of a song

My Pockets worked with Two Way Street in Hull to write a song - It’s Hard To Think Of The Future.

Listen to - It's Hard To Think Of The Future

Two Way Street works with young refugees.  Supporting them in all areas of their lives.  The young people were very open to learning and playing music but one of the great challenges in the group was language.  Most of the young people had very limited English, but also they were all from different parts of the world themselves and so could not communicate with each other either.

Music is an amazing way for everyone to feel connected.  It is a way of communicating without words and as the sessions progressed the freedom we all felt from this was very powerful.  We would often just start playing and continue improvising without a break from long periods of time.  There was no need to struggle explaining ourselves to each other.

We felt that once we were a group and able to communicate with music it was important to support the young people with language.  After all outside of the sessions in Hull they needed to speak English to get by.  We worked with them to find sentences that captured their experiences and then add them to the song.  As refugees in a new country the idea that it was hard to think of the future seemed both obvious and insightful into their situation.  Together we decided that would be the lyric the song focused on.

As we listened to the final mix it was clear that the process of creating something both with and without language had opened up greater understanding between us all.  Listen here to - It's Hard To Think Of The Future