Category: Young Producers

Visit to Southbank 1

Young Producers: Getting inspired for Crossroads

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Earlier this week Young Producers Demi and Marleigh joined Jake and Matt for a field trip to the Southbank Centre to get some inspiration for their Crossroads event on 2nd Dec (put it in your diary!) from Soojin Suh Coloris Rrio as part of the London Jazz Festival!

Young Producer’s blog

Session 4 involved discussing set design in relation to our lighting and props, creating an elevator pitch for the event and for ourselves as young creatives.

As the venue is a church I feel as though it was very important for us to establish how we design the space to make it look more like a music performance venue. We were informed of our budget to make this happen and Demi got to work with finding props online that would help us. As artistic producer, Demi also created images that we could use to post on the ITT’s instagram stories alongside questions to ask prospective audience members.

Meanwhile, I came up with a few questions to ask Rob, to compliment the elevator pitch that we created. As Rob is one of our music leads and a very important part of the team, I look forward to hearing his responses and working on the music for the event on the 2nd December.

After a quick bite of some street food by the Southbank Centre, the night was rounded off with watching a jazz gig in the Purcell Room which we had mixed reviews about. The venue was quite intimate and with purposeful lighting along with a neatly designed stage, the gig left us young producers with a few things to consider for our own event.

For me, being able to link what you learn to real life (as we were able to by watching the jazz performance) has helped me to remember and evaluate what I’m learning along the way as we put it into practice. This is something that I’ve really enjoyed being able to do so far and I look forward to continuing to do so.

Marleigh, Young Producer

Visit to Southbank 1

Join us at 7pm on Thursday 2nd December for their event ‘Crossroads’ at beautiful music venue The Old Church (Stoke Newington, N16 9ES).

The event is FREE but please RSVP to projects@irenetaylortrust.com so we have an idea of expected numbers.

Crossroads flyer

 

Young Producers blog: reaching the Crossroads

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The Young Producers programme is all about supporting young people to curate a live music event to showcase young artists; the project was forced to take a hiatus in 2020 for obvious reasons – so we’re doubly excited to introduce our 2021 Young Producers: Demi, Mariana and Marleigh.

Join us at 7pm on Thursday 2nd December for their event ‘Crossroads’ at beautiful music venue The Old Church (Stoke Newington, N16 9ES).

The event is FREE but please RSVP to projects@irenetaylortrust.com so we have an idea of expected numbers.

The Young Producers have jointly put together a blog below about their experiences so far…

Initially, Marleigh had a lot of different expectations for the project. He was surprised to find that the venue was already booked, but was thankful for the support and was looking forward to branching out his skills, always looking to develop himself as an artist and music producer.

Demi was excited about learning more of the marketing side of things and gaining experience to apply to her career as a DJ.

Session 1

The first session took place online, a first time for the Young Producers scheme, and was focused on creating an event initial idea and understanding the event timeline and our roles. After meeting everyone, we played an icebreaker exercise in which we were given a secret themed event which the other Young Producers had to guess from asking questions. We had to think about the target audience, location, venue, lighting, music, seating plan and more to work it out.

The morning of the session ended with a talk from freelance producer Marie.

Demi: “I’ve met Marie before on Making Tracks, she’s really cool and gives really good advice as a freelance producer.”

We also decided our roles in the group. There’s an Artistic Producer, a Communications producer and an operation producer in our team; we have all been working together and merging ideas but also have our own responsibilities to develop the project.

The rest of the session was focused on researching our ideas and presenting them to the group, sourcing images, fonts and text that inspired us. We created a mind map of initial ideas to work with and drew connections between what we brought.

Marleigh: “I realised from the session that there’s a lot of things I don’t know, but was looking forward to learning more.”

It was very different and challenging to not be in the same room when starting this project, when you’re not there in the space with other creatives it is definitely a different atmosphere, but we were still able to showcase our ideas to the group and start the process of creating a theme for our event.

Session 2

The second session was all about creating the event flyer and learning more about how to market and develop the brand of an event. When discussing our initial ideas from session 1, we decided to ask the group “What’s important to you in your life?” and started from there.

We found that our thoughts related really well and started to focus on the idea of ‘road to self-discovery’. Marleigh shared with the other Young Producers that this reminded him of Big Zuu’s album cover for Navigate, and that it shared a lot of common themes. From this, we found our imagery for the event of roads, signs and streets to relate to the idea of finding your own path, and came up with the event name: Crossroads.

Marleigh: “It felt like a bit of a rollercoaster, and at times proper stressful. As ideas were flying around it felt uncertain, but when the drafts of the flyers began being sent through by Demi the theme really started to come together.”

Mariana: “The last two sessions have been really informative and really helpful as I understood more about creating and putting up an event. We looked at social media, creating a theme and event marketing.”

Session 3

Today was our third session of the Young Producers programme; so far we have down our ideas for the theme, the venue where the performance will take place and we’ve also created our flyer that will promote the event on social media.

We went to visit the venue and we had to think and decide where the audience will be and where the artists are going to be performing. We also had to think about any restrictions that may be in place, if we wanted to include refreshments, capacity considerations and any creative ideas for the background and stage setting.

There’s more work to be done and we’ll give you an update on how things are going.

Don’t forget to RSVP for the performance! projects@irenetaylortrust.com

The Young Producers Team

Crossroads flyer

Young Producers film: Spirit of Utopia

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In autumn 2019 we began working with three new Young Producers, who had all previously taken part on our Making Tracks programme. Together they devised, developed and delivered their own music event, ‘Spirit of Utopia’, to provide a performance platform for other young musicians and  “an evening of meaningful happiness” for the audience at The Old Church, Stoke Newington, on 21/11/19.

In the words of Lucine and Montell, this is the story of how they created ‘Spirit of Utopia’.

The Young Producers project was supported by The London Community Foundation ‘ESDF Saving London Lives’

Young Producers is back! Don’t miss ‘Spirit of Utopia’ performance on 21st November

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We’re delighted to introduce our 3 new Young Producers: Lucine, Jahanzeb and Montell. For the last few weeks they have been working together to decide on their induvial roles and the theme for their gig, which will feature other young people who, like them, have previously taken part on Making Tracks.

Lucine is taking the lead on Operations, Jahanzeb will be masterminding Communications and Montell will be the Artistic Director. Together they agreed on the theme of ‘utopia’ for the performance and decided on the title Spirit of Utopia.

Join us on Thursday 21st November at The Old Church, Stoke Newington, London:

Spirit of Utopia

Spirit of Utopia is a free event, but please book as space in the venue is limited – register here.

The Old Church is one of the most interesting arts venues in London – the capital’s only surviving Elizabethan church!

The Young Producers visited the space earlier in the week so they could begin to plan how to decorate it and stage the performance. They have some great ideas to make it special and bring the theme of Utopia alive.

Montell’s reflection: 

“I feel that today was really good because we got to see one of the oldest standing churches in England and got to see the cool and exciting design and building.  We also had a nice talk about classical music with the Southbank Centre. Plus, at the church I got to play the organ.”  

Lucine’s reflection:

“After visiting the venue we had more scope to work with!  I felt I was better able to chair our discussion, keep things on track and listen to everyone’s ideas. We seem to have a finalised concept and contingency.  I feel more prepared and ready to begin putting things together.  The venue manager was super helpful, he answered all our questions well and offered some great décor.” 

Jahanzeb’s reflection (audio clip below): 

 

Young Producers is supported by The London Community Foundation ‘ESDF Saving London Lives’

YOUNG PRODUCERS: PARADOX & NIROBI 2

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Young Producers is a new project for young people who have taken part in Making Tracks, supported by the Arts Patron Trust. Nirobi and Paradox are collaborating to put on a gig involving other young people and will be blogging about the process.

Sign up to attend their event ‘Voices of a Generation’ at the Lighthouse, Shoreditch, on Wednesday 25th July here.  

Paradox: For session 2 of Young Producers project, we went to a show at the Roundhouse with different performers and it was an hour long. The way it was set up was different, with white pillows on the ground, sat on the ground watching.  There were performers performing spoken word as the whole show was a spoken word piece about a part of a person’s story. At the start the performers would have a little interview, there was audio of an interview, and then they would perform a piece. It was immersive, and they put music behind their poetry. Some of it was interesting …

It made me think I don’t want too much spoken work in our event because it’s not for all the audience – some were engaged, and some weren’t. It was different, I have never been to a show like that before – it felt very abstract as there were dancers as well. A female dancer performed, and I didn’t know if she was part of the performance or not.

If I could take one thing away from the performance, it would be collaboration.

Nirobi: They put pillows on the floor, made it very intimate – the lights weren’t very bright, you could just see a silhouette of the performer, almost like a projection of them. Then they would say someone’s name with the projection and a little audio after that. Behind each piece there was a backing track, so it would be like they’re doing a spoken word piece over an instrumental.

There was one piece by Caleb, who was quite political, and he was talking about religion. I thought it was quite cool the way he expressed his opinion. I liked the fact they used the audio because it gave it a different feel, as otherwise it would have been quiet and you’re just sitting there.

If I could take one thing away from the performance for ours, it would be the audio. Before people perform, there was this interview of their part of them they feared most, and then afterwards they would go into their poem.

Sign up to attend their event ‘Voices of a Generation’ at the Lighthouse, Shoreditch, on Wednesday 25th July here.  

Young Producers: Paradox & Nirobi 1

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Young Producers is a new project for young people who have taken part in Making Tracks, supported by the Arts Patron Trust. Nirobi and Paradox are collaborating to put on a gig this month involving other young people and will be blogging about the process.

Our Personal Development Coordinator Lauren caught up with them at the end of day 1:

Lauren: So how have you found your first day in one word?

Paradox: Good, still.

Nirobi: Interesting, started off understanding how to structure an event. We brainstormed ideas for what we’re going to talk about, and then now we’re checking venues, which is awesome. We get to see the kind of venues that are out there and what would be good for this type of event.

Lauren: Getting first-hand experience of what working with venues is like.

Nirobi: Yes exactly.

Lauren: Things don’t always go to plan…

Nirobi: Yes, one of the venues was closed, but luckily I’ve been there before so I know what it looks like downstairs!

Paradox: Probably not going to use it though, because that was disrespectful, they don’t deserve customers.

Nirobi: They don’t deserve our amazing talent and art! But we got this one, this current venue we’re checking out, called The Lighthouse and we’ve been to Hoxton7 as well, nice and intimate – I liked downstairs.

Paradox: Just looked at three or four venues and chatted to the booking agent, to see how many people go there on the daily, having a show and thought about what venue would be best.

Nirobi: We looked at the sizes and how many people we could fit in there… one of them was 300, so we’re looking at it realistically and seeing that we don’t want to have too big of a space and then it might look empty and not be as ‘lit’. Whereas if it’s smaller and intimate… plus, people that are already coming in from the street, so that’s possibly a better idea but we’re still thinking about it.

Lauren: Any learning?

Nirobi: I’ve never really looked at the logistics of how you put on events. I just go and think ‘wow this is amazing’, but actually it’s a lot of work!

Paradox: It’s good to get an idea of, when you see a booking agent, what questions you need to ask.

Nirobi: I want to develop how to promote and get people noticing more.

Don’t miss the gig on 25th July at The Lighthouse (62-68 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3A)!

Young Producers Sesh N Sauce

Young Producers: Sesh N Sauce LIVE!

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We’re feeling very proud of our Young Producers Müqzz and Yung Hamlit and all the young people who took to the stage at their ‘Sesh N Sauce’ event in Lewisham last night (postponed last week due to snow). The performances were magnificent – professional, original and entertaining! So much musical talent! It’s so inspiring to see the young people we work with on Making Tracks continue to flourish on Young Producers – and wonderful to have some familiar faces returning to share their new musical ventures with us.

Fish Police at Bush Hall

Young Producers: Müqzz blog 3

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Young Producers is a new project for young people who have taken part in Making Tracks, supported by the Arts Patron Trust. Our  Young Producers Müqzz and Pedro are collaborating to put on a gig involving other young people and will be blogging about the process.

Fish Police at Bush HallOn our third day at Young Producers, we attended the Sounding Out gig. The Fish Police were the first act to perform and I was blown away with the performance. It was quite odd, something I’ve never seen before. The sounds were great and I could see the whole crowd bopping. I never knew who they were, which gave me high expectation, but they managed to meet.

Inside Out at Bush HallI managed to see all the acts before the actual gig at rehearsals and I was lost for words by the songs that Inside Out were going to perform. No words can do any justice but I have to say Alcoholic is my favourite song. It’s a song that gets you thinking, deep and has a strong message. I like songs with a story and a meaning behind it and I was glad to hear that song. Seeing it in rehearsals and then seeing it on the day, the song was bought to life and I could see the crowd enjoying it.

Before the Inside Out performance, Phaedra, a violinist group performed. Classical music isn’t really my cup of tea but their performance was amazing. It was something that I’ve never seen before, I’m used to listening to more contemporary music.

What I’ve learnt about the event was the different styles of artists that performed. Some of the songs had strong meanings and it told a story. It made me ponder about my experiences and gave me inspiration to write songs when I got home.

Young Producers: Müqzz blog 2

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Young Producers is a new project for young people who have taken part in Making Tracks, supported by the Arts Patron Trust. Our Young Producers Müqzz and Pedro are collaborating to put on a gig involving other young people and will be blogging about the process.

On our second day at Young Producers we decided the name of our show which is Sesh ‘n’ Sauce. We then visited the two possible venues for the show which were Fox & Firkin and DIY Space.

I really liked the atmosphere of Fox & Firkin (Lewisham), quite quirky and contemporary. However the train station was quite far from the venue which could be a problem for people coming to the venue. It was set in a pub which means it is an open place, so anyone can come in and join. Also this means we won’t have to do a lot promoting.

The next venue was DIY Space for London (Peckham). The train station was quite far away from the venue. I liked the performance area – it was like a rave type feel. With this place we would have to do a lot of promoting to ensure we have a crowd unlike the other place this venue is a closed place.

In conclusion, I would go for Fox & Firkin. I like the vibe it was giving. There’s a pub so people can buy drinks, food, sit comfortably and enjoy the gig.