Young people and young adults co-created a piece of music with professional musician Paddy Villers-Stuart – deciding on the theme of ‘quarantine’ and spending 6 weeks generating music through gathering found sounds, creating rhythms with household objects, discussing their favourite styles, playing their own instruments for each other, singing together and writing lyrics.
We Make Culture’s Laura Brewis also visited with Sunderland Young Musicians project participants Ami McGuinness & Lottie Willis, who played for the group and took part in Q&As about their experience of performing and music-making.
Young people on this programme were given the opportunity to complete their Discover Arts Award by taking part in the project. You can find out more about this scheme on our Arts Award page.
Helix Arts will continue to build connections with partners in Northumberland to best reach out to young people they work with – especially those most at risk of isolation and disconnection, including young carers, young people at risk of offending and young adults with disabilities.
We’ve Still Got the Beat builds on Helix Arts’ long history with Cramlington Voluntary Youth project and the previous successes – Youth Melody’ (2013-2015), and digital music-making project ‘Off the Beat’ (2016-18) and more recently ‘We got the Beat’ (2018-2019), which involved a music residential with artists Paddy Villiers-Stuart, Beccy Owen and Georgia Turnbull in Kielder.
