In February 2018 a group of young people from Lewisham YOS took part in Making Tracks, formed the band ‘Undecided (At The Lounge)’ and together produced a set of songs written from their own perspectives and life experiences for the album ‘Food for Thought’, available to listen to now:
Have a listen to Muqzz’ (aka Abdul) new track ‘Silent but Deadly’, written and performed on the most recent Young Producers’ event: ‘Summer Awakening’.
We first met Abdul on a Making Tracks project back in April, when he and the rest of the band Southsiders recorded an amazing album; Sounds of Creativity. Everyone at the ITT is looking forward to hearing more from Abdul!
On 4th August, our amazing supporter Nadeem will be jumping out of a plane to raise funds for the Irene Taylor Trust! You can find out more and donate to Nadeem’s sky dive here:
https://www.gofundme.com/NadeemIsBonkers
Nadeem was inspired to support the Irene Taylor Trust after attending one of our Making Tracks community performances;
“I was very, very impressed. The opportunity for the young adults to express themselves through song writing, the group dynamic and the recording and performance. Brilliant stuff and very rewarding I’m sure for all involved.”
Everyone at the ITT would like to thank Nadeem and wish him good luck!
And don’t worry – you don’t always have to jump out of a plane to support our work! You could come up with any fundraising activity you like. Or if you’re the more sedentary type, you could become a Friend, make a one-off donation or support us through your company!
Last night’s gig was fantastic! The Super-band made up of Lou-marie, Muqzz, Ola, RT, Emma, Tru-Star, Gary, Ian and Chris performed 4 super new tracks, ‘Silent but Deadly‘, ‘I Don’t Wanna Hear It‘, ‘Mental Machine Gunner‘, and ‘Stars‘. We were also treated to amazing spoken word pieces by RT & King Ahmed, as well as an explosive solo set by Pedro. Congratulations to everyone who performed!
Young Producers is a new project for young people who have taken part in Making Tracks, supported by the Arts Patron Trust. Our second 2 Young Producers are collaborating to put on a gig involving other young people and will be blogging about the process.
This morning we met Jake at London Bridge station and then went to a cute little cafe called the Breakfast Club, where they played old music very loud!! I loved it, they also did a cool retro selection of drinks.
After that we got on a bus to Battersea to the Magic Garden – like the name, the garden was beautiful with sofas, old cabs and cool drink bars. We then waited and ate our lunch talking about the show for a few hours until the open mic night started! It was amazing – there was loads of actual musicians and people just going there for a sing song!
There was one man that reminded me of me he was so nervous but the audience was so supportive! Shouting to him he’s doing so well, he kept swearing lol! It made me want to do one there! Just have to get some songs ready. Also there was some crazy acts but they were very enjoyable. leaving the audience talking still after they left. There was a large selection of hip hop, soul, r&b and all original music. Overall a very enjoyable experience would defo do it again.
So improvements i’d suggest would be.. can you do covers? And if you can’t play an instrument, can you get someone else to play one for you? Do they have winners, or does everyone get a free meal as its Sing For Your Supper?
Young Producers is a new project for young people who have taken part in Making Tracks, supported by the Arts Patron Trust. Our second 2 Young Producers are collaborating to put on a gig involving other young people and will be blogging about the process.
It’s the third session of Young Producers and our workload is increasing steadily. we made our way to the Southbank Centre to watch the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra perform. We arrived at about 4pm and the performance was due to begin at 7:30pm so we had about three hours to work on our event. Lauren, Louisa and I had a discussion about what our social media strategy would be. I came up with suggestions of pictures we could take around the Southbank building to post on our social media seeing as we were close to landmarks like the London Eye and the Royal Festival Hall.
Later, we had a call from Jake telling us that he had organised for us to speak to Sally – one of the members of the orchestra. My role was to come up with questions to ask her. We then recorded some Instagram videos and vines, we ran into a bit of a problem because it started to rain so we decided to take pictures of the performance area instead.
The performance started on time, the setup was amazing with all the instruments. The performance was conducted by Japanese conductor Tadaaki Otaka. We listened to the works of Elgar, Tchaikovsky and Walton. The orchestra sounded incredible and it was inspiring to watch a large number of people playing together as a unit. The level of team work involved really showed and seeing the orchestra play gave me some extra motivation to make sure that our event is just as good.
Young Producers is a new project for young people who have taken part in Making Tracks, supported by the Arts Patron Trust. Our second 2 Young Producers are collaborating to put on a gig involving other young people and will be blogging about the process.
It was straight to business on day 2 of our project. Lauren presented us with a draft of our flyer it looked really good (shout out to Luke) but we decided to tweak the colour scheme to make it fit better with our theme for the event. We swapped the background colour which was a kind of orangey-red to sky blue and we made some adjustments to the images.
The afternoon session was the best part of the day, we met with Alex, co-founder of LeeFest (now Neverland) – a summertime music festival/theme park. He had a lot of knowledge to share and he gave us some great advice. You could feel the knowledge pouring out of him that it was hard to keep up!
Alex gave us a lot of tips on how to make sure that our event was successful. He summed it up into five points which was basically:
All of these points have several sub points which are too long to share in this blog but you get the point. Alex runs a small music venue now with a capacity of 100. Although some of the information he gave us wouldn’t necessarily apply to our event because ours is not for profit, it was helpful to learn about what it takes and the challenges involved in running a successful music venue.
For the next session, we are planning to shoot some video vines/pictures as part of promoting our event on social media. We will also be visiting the Southbank Centre to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra so keep your eyes peeled!
Young Producers is a new project for young people who have taken part in Making Tracks, supported by the Arts Patron Trust. Our second 2 Young Producers are collaborating to put on a gig involving other young people and will be blogging about the process.
Yesterday Ola and Louisa met to finalise their flyer for Young Producers presents Summer Awakening and look over the details for the venue SURYA.
They also received a masterclass in events marketing and planning from Alex.
We’re looking forward to seeing what they do with his advice and insights for their event on the 28th June.
Young Producers 2 is set to happen on the 28th June !
Look out for photos, blogs and more from Louisa and Ola as they plan Summer Awakening!
Young Producers is a new project for young people who have taken part in Making Tracks, supported by the Arts Patron Trust. Our second 2 Young Producers are collaborating to put on a gig involving other young people and will be blogging about the process.
Young Producers present: Summer Awakening
A Celebration of young London artistic talent
Doors open at 7pm, event starts at 7:30pm
SURYA, 156 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9JL
Find the event on Facebook here:
Click attending on the event or RSVP to projects@irenetaylortrust.com
Making Tracks 