Music has become one of the core activities of the company over the past two years. With support from the National Foundation for Youth Music through their Music Maker Programme, we have established a reputation for working with socially excluded young people, using music making as a tool to enhance self-esteem and confidence as well as unlock new musical talent and develop young people's skills in a range of contemporary music genres and styles. Many of our current projects are based around using music technology, but we also offer a range of projects using instruments, singing, percussion etc.

 

 
Holding it Down

RAP is part of the Leicester Youth Offending Service and is a voluntary scheme which provides resettlement provision to young people in the criminal justice system who have, or have had, a significant substance misuse problem linked to their offending. Alongside substance misuse there are often other problems with mental health, accommodation, family issues and unemployment.

The RAP Team focuses on motivating young people to engage in positive leisure activities alongside re-building their lives. Initially Soft Touch provided some taster art and music sessions. These were received favourably by the young people and led to a longer-term project, “Holding it Down”. Now we have been awarded a Youth Music grant to extend the project over two years. This will enable us to provide opportunities for young people to achieve a recognised Arts Award and to set up a traineeship for a young person to become a “peer educator“ on the project.

Soft Touch and the RAP team have built a good working relationship, which has enabled everyone to benefit from the collaboration. Recently, myself and Chris from Soft Touch gave a presentation to the Cultural Strategy Group, which will hopefully encourage further positive partnerships such as ours!

Louise Cassie, RAP Project Co-ordinator, Leicester City Youth Offending Service.

www.leicester-rap.co.uk

d/l two tracks from the project

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Sounds Around

Sounds Around is a nine month project supported by a Connexions Voluntary Sector Grant. Since April, we have taken mobile music technology equipment to centres in Beaumont Leys, St Mathews and Highfields to encourage young people not in education, employment or training to take part in music activities and develop thier skills and confidence.

We managed to secure further funding from the Youth Service to extend the amount of sessions in Beaumont Leys over the summer and funding from Awards For All which has allowed us to run extra sessions in St Mathews.

 
Sound X Change is a two-year Partnership Programme funded by the National Foundation for Youth Music which started in September 2003. It provides an introduction to music making for young people with limited opportunities and is concentrating on 3 key partnerships which include a school exclusion project, a housing project and a special school for disabled young people.

These organisations are all committed to training staff within their organisations in music skills and technology so that once the project has ended they will be able to continue music work at their centres. The project gives the young people opportunities to make, produce and record their own music as well as offering development opportunities for young people who wish to take their music making further.

Some of the young people on the programme have really benefitted from their involvement - the LE5 Crew are now recording an album and other young people have performed their own material in front of new audiences at a local urban festival and a Connexions showcase event at the Y Theatre in Leicester.