by Author Ayvin Rogers

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Musical Progression Signposts For Young People

B Sharp has launched a new musical progression resource website for young people and music educators: www.bsharpresources.org

We all enjoy working with young people and passing on our enthusiasm for music. Why would we be using the Youth Music Network if we didn't? Looking around the map of the UK and seeing who is doing what just shows the range of fantastic work going on with music and young people. But where do they go after leaving our projects?

Progressing beyond what we can offer is something Youth Music and other funders are always asking about, and rightly so. It would be a tease if we fired them up about music and then left them on their own when our projects finish. There is a big world out there with lots to offer but where do you start looking?

B Sharp has been working on an online solution and has come up with B Sharp Resources, a new website packed with information for young people to explore music and the music industry. There are also many links and topics that are useful for music educators. There are two themes to the site:

  • Links to other websites that may be useful signposts when looking for jobs, training, singing, publicity and promotion, buying/selling/listening to music, what’s on, festivals, and other organisations that support music making. Lots of different topics related to music are covered and each has its own page of links.
  • Ideas into Action is a series of guidelines about event and project planning. The notes aim to help young people who want to make thing happen, and to encourage innovation and enterprise in music. Once understood, the principles can be applied to any type of project.

I have been researching and curating information for the website over the last few months, as part of B Sharp's current Youth Music funded project The Big Mix (originally called Young Leaders @ The Hub but changed with young people's feedback). This is something we have wanted to do for a long time. It seemed an obvious way to signpost young people but it takes time to put everything together and can easily be one of the things you put on the back burner. It's something we promised Youth Music in our Young Leadership grant application and so here we are...! It's been an eye opener and fascinating to dip into so many websites and see what people have to offer. It's been a learning process for me too - I hadn't used Wordpress before and have had lessons from a local Webmaster Just SO Media House, so I've been having some CPD in the process.

We hope that others will enjoy exploring the website and signpost young people to it. This is just the start and we will be adding more topics as time allows. As a way of sharing effective practice, we hope people will give feedback and give link suggestions to strengthen the resource. It is something we can all share, use and benefit from. Below each topic is a reply box where you can add your suggestions and comments.