World Music Academy: Inspire Project Case Study

Musiko Musika’s World Music Academy: Inspire was a new training and creative development course for culturally diverse and talented young musicians aged 16 to 24 that we piloted with funding from Sound Connections' Innovate Fund.

WMA: Inspire enables young musicians from all backgrounds to be able to develop the life skills, leadership, and vocational musicianship skills that will enable them to progress towards a career in the music industry or work in community music. The project is based at the Lyric Hammersmith, tackling the gap in provision for aspiring young musicians from diverse cultural backgrounds to access music education post-16, and targets young people from challenging socio-economic backgrounds who might otherwise miss out on fulfilling their potential.

This Case Study explores the project in detail, the challenges and developments as the project progressed and includes a post-project reflection from a trainee twelve months on.

Following this pilot project WMA: Inspire has now become part of our Arts Council National Portfolio programme of activity 2018-22.

WMA: Inspire Trainee Addassa Follett reflecting on her experience of WMA: Inspire and her progression following that course

''Over the past year and a half I have worked closely with Musiko Musika. Joining the training programme helped me to figure out what I wanted to do with my music career and helped me to look at my long term goals.

The training programme offered me the chance to work with young musicians and get an insight into the teaching profession. Teaching music to the different classes helped me to not only choose my career path but to also get an idea of what age group I would like to work with.

Alongside the programme I was studying UAL Music Performance and Production at South Thames College. There I had formed my own trio 'NEA'. We sing acoustic covers of songs with a twist, which Musiko Musika were very supportive with. As a trio we have performed at many venues including the ''TASTE'' restaurant, ''The All England Tennis and Croquet Club'' in Wimbledon and got bookings for other small venues regularly. Musiko Musika encouraged me to write original material not just for myself but also for my trio group. This gave me more confidence as a writer and it made me want to write more.

Whilst working on the programme I also joined the BBC proms youth choir academy and we began rehearsing for the BBC Proms 2017. Not only did I gain a huge amount of experience working with young singers in my age group, I found that I really did enjoy singing classical music which was a genre I hadn't fully explored yet. Choral singing is definitely something I enjoy now. Since then I went on to do more work with the BBC.

Overall since finishing the training programme I have become a more confident, determined musician. Rachel, Mauricio and Laura encouraged me through one to one tutorials to pursue my passion for music and to turn it into a career."