Winter Term at Cre8

This term has been about unboxing. Nobody wanted to live their life online anymore, so we worked out a way to get people into our fantastically-equipped recording studio for some actual, in-person, socially-distanced, live music.

We started in bubbles based on schools – 5 young people per bubble, two groups, swapping rooms after an hour with a clean in between. It was working perfectly for a while. and then we had a COVID case. Staff and young people had to isolate and after 2 weeks, luckily nobody else had become ill. We came back thought again about how to do things safely. We began a new method of running groups of 5 for an hour and then a different group of 5 for an hour, which seemed to work as needed. 

It has been a busy term regardless. From September, we introduced 3 new support workers and promoted 2 young music leaders from within the group; talked about mental health; listened to different genres of music to encourage expression of emotions; did some body percussion; wrote some group songs; enjoyed the company and collaboration of other human beings; we felt free from the confines of the Zoom box; we laughed, argued, reminded people to keep away from each other; asked the same 3 questions whenever someone walked through the door; answered on autopilot; prepared a Christmas concert; taught instruments and achieved grades; decorated a tiny Christmas tree; and welcomed new young people who had been brought by word of mouth to find out about the musical opportunities we are able to offer.

We have rounded off this term with our Online Winter Youth Music Concert. It’s a nice way to end the project’s year with closure and look forward to different ways of working in the next. Our young people and music team have worked incredibly hard to get it together and it was great to be able to showcase this work for everyone to see in a way that was safe to all. 

We'd like to say a huge thanks to Youth Music this year for the gift of funding and the continued work we’ve been able to do for our young people, and reassurance we could provide for our staff. 

Now it’s on to 2021, and whatever the new year has to throw at us.