Lewisham Music Young Producers: Digital community

Lewisham Music is an award-winning independent charity and the lead partner for Lewisham Music Education Hub. Since becoming a charity and launching our new creative community hub ‘Lewisham Music @ The Fellowship’ in 2019, we have embedded music production and technology across all our programmes.

We see music production and technology as an important part of ensuring that we continue to diversify our offer from traditional forms of music education. We want young people from different backgrounds and with different interests to see themselves reflected in the charity's work and to be able to engage with their own unique identity. Digital music platforms play an increasingly important role to breaking down barriers to equitable access to music education. Even if you don’t have access to the latest equipment, there are so many online tools out there that allow anyone to create.

With the ever-evolving advancements in music technology, music production serves up boundless opportunities to breathe new life into music programmes in a truly inclusive way. Young people are surrounded by music and technology on a daily basis. The combination promotes high levels of engagement and becomes a powerful motivator, enabling young people to develop meaningful connections between music and their own lives. Not only this, but music production is also a great catalyst for integrating young people from a wide range of musical and social backgrounds, exposing them to new ideas, opening up a world of collaboration and creativity.

At the centre of Lewisham Music's community music spaces in Bellingham, south-east London, sits the Novelist Studio, a hi-spec music production and recording studio aptly named after local Lewisham legend, music producer, grime MC, writer (and all-round creative), Novelist. It serves as an ever-present reminder of the importance of music production and its ability to change young people's lives.

‘When I first entered the Novelist Studio, I just felt at home. Then I just reminisced on the times when I was a young person, and the struggles we were going through, imagining how much difference having access to a studio like this would have made, it just would have been a whole other thing. To all you young people out there, don’t take it for granted,’ says Novelist.

The emergence of the Novelist Studio was just the start. We needed the specialist skills to match our ambitions of developing a forward-thinking music production programme. Enter Josh Oladipo, also known as Intalekt, Lewisham Music's first specialist music production tutor. A professional music producer, radio DJ, and songwriter in his own right, Oladipo brought the skills and industry knowledge that has seen our music production offer develop from a single community workshop to a year-round programme that transcends both our community and school programmes, helping to share the diversification of the music our young people create.

Lewisham Young Producers and We Produce

Running from the Novelist Studio, designed by Oladipo, and shaped by the voices and experiences of young people, Lewisham Young Producers and We Produce are integral strands of our music production programme. This programme has been developed thanks to funding from The Matthew Nicholls Foundation and The Ironmongers' Company. Throughout the year, young people explore the fundamentals – beat-making, drum patterns, recording audio, recording live instruments, sound-scaping, melodies, chord progressions – while developing technical production skills using a range of production software. The young creatives are supported and urged to explore different genres, nurturing collaboration, with the aim of finding their own unique sound. ‘Lewisham Young Producers is a space where I feel safe and comfortable to try new things. Being around inspiring people has given me confidence to explore my music and my creativity,’ says David, aged 16.

The key outcomes from our music production programme are improved confidence in utilising music technology; an elevated sense of personal confidence through creative expression; development of connections with groups of like-minded creators; and the improvement of the Young Leaders' knowledge and confidence to teach and lead music activity.

We caught up with Joshua, one of the Young Leaders, to find out how he feels he has benefited from the music production programme. ‘I’ve learnt what it takes to cooperate with others in the music industry such as producers, videographers and other artists,’ he says. ‘At school and college, I don’t have opportunities to experiment with beat production and learn about the software and techniques that I use here. I have been taught more about these elements and at a slow and understandable pace that lets me learn as well as experiment with whatever I make. With the support of the team, I have been able to support other young people to collaborate and record with other musicians and be exposed to their various styles.’

Through our music production programme some unique opportunities have arisen, most notably the Music For Youth (MFY) Remix Prom 2021 project called AfterGlow. Lewisham Music was commissioned to develop a technology-based music project which expanded the scope of the MFY Prom beyond the live event and targeted young musicians working with contemporary genres which are currently under-represented in MFY events and the music education sector overall.

Our ‘We Produce’ group used the stems (a stem is a discrete or grouped collection of audio sources mixed together) from performances at the MFY Prom to create remixes and re-imaginings of the material, predominantly using Logic and Ableton Live software and Ableton Push hardware. The project actively challenged the emerging producers with a broad range of material, taught them the art of remix, and how to use live audio within digital audio workstations (DAWs). This in turn enabled young performers from the MFY Prom to see their performances given a new lease of life by other young people, creating a sense of musical collaboration between young people from across the country from a broad range of musical and social backgrounds.

Embedding music production

Our community music programme includes key partnership projects which integrate music production under many guises, strengthening the artistic and creative process. These include Animate Orchestra, a creative orchestra with Trinity Laban; New Levels, an artist development project with Tramshed; and our own multi-genre projects such as Fellowship Music Collective.

‘Opportunities like this teach me more about the industry as well as allow me to work with other people my age to further my understanding of music production. It's an experience I’ll never forget,’ says 14-year-old Adrian. ‘It's provided me with the knowledge I need to take my music to different levels.’

We have evolved and developed our offer to schools to include music production/technology, not only as one off workshops but using it as an important facilitator to develop learning in music, applying it across performing, composing, improvising, and listening. The opportunities for the use of music production exist wherever a music lesson takes place.

Learning to earning

Stemming from our music production programme, and through co-production with young people and music leaders, we have identified a need for further progression pathways, particularly for young people aged 16 plus to explore routes into the creative industries. Lewisham Music has invested time and resource into strengthening connections within the industry and creating spaces where young people can gain experience and information about working within the music industries.

In the past year, for example, we have run an Audio Production course for NEET (not in education, employment or training) young adults which gave them expert training, practical experience of live and studio sound and all in a collaborative and career-focused environment. We also held music industry events such as ‘Behind the Artist’ – a panel talk looking at the diverse and rewarding roles behind the artist in the music industry – in which we have featured under-represented professionals working across live and studio sound. This event championed less visible roles within the music industry and gave a safe space for local young people to explore their options in the creative industries, helping them to navigate the transition from learning to potentially earning from their music. ‘It felt like such a safe space to ask big questions,’ says one young creative, aged 17.

Access and inclusion

Lewisham Young Producers gained significant interest from Lewisham's Looked After Children Service which has allowed us to extend our work to care-experienced and displaced young people. ‘We Make Music’ was a twoday creative music making project in partnership with Lewisham Virtual School, who support the educational attainment and progress of children and young people in care, and gave participants the opportunity to try song-writing, music production, composition, recording and arranging. The group had the opportunity to create their own music shaped by their interests and lived experiences and were given the freedom to express their creativity.

We spoke to one young person, aged 12, to find out how they felt they benefited from the project: ‘Being here felt like my second home. It was new to me, so the entire experience of how we composed, tested and edited the different sound was very exciting. Being able to explore my own style and taste was the best part for me.’

Last year we received funding from Youth Music for ‘Sonic Minds', a two-year creative music project working with hundreds of displaced and care-experienced children, helping them to create, write and record music shaped by their stories and aspirations. This project has gone from strength to strength and recently led to Lewisham Music working with a sound engineer and artist Gawain Hewitt to create an interactive sound installation. Featuring a brain cast in pewter mounted on a gramophone base, the artwork celebrates the unknowable creativity of the brain. It advocates for the participants of our ‘Sonic Minds' project to allow their music and sounds to be elevated and celebrated. As the visitor moves their finger around the different parts of the brain, new stories and creations come to life. ‘The Sonic Mind’ is on display at The Horniman Museum in south-east London and is well worth a visit. And it is cutting-edge developments like this that bring music production and technology to the forefront, introducing them to new audiences and everyone to new possibilities.

Since 2018 we’ve been working with Greenvale SEND School on a collaborative music partnership, part of Open Up Music's Open Orchestras, which helps special schools set up accessible orchestras, so that hundreds of young disabled people get first access to music education every year. Open Orchestras sees the perfect blend of music technology, ‘traditional instruments', and voice in a truly inclusive way that is creative and inspires us with new approaches to our entire offer. Being imaginative about what is considered to be ‘an instrument’ can remove a lot of barriers. Music technology and production pioneer this.

What's next?

The ongoing developments of our music production and technology programme have given us a platform to better evaluate our work around music technology and develop our evidence base. We have built a clearer picture of the positive personal, social, and musical outcomes reported by the young people, and we will use this evidence base to shape future developments to our programme.

We are particularly interested in continuing to extend this area of work to reach more children and young people facing challenging circumstances and to improve access opportunities for under-represented groups. There is a clear gender imbalance across live and studio sound, and we would like to address this by creating spaces, programmes, opportunities, visibility and representation for women, female-identifying and non-binary people.

Less than five per cent of the music tech industry is comprised of women, non-binary or trans people, and less than one per cent of these are people of colour. Our aim is to raise the profile of diverse role models to bring more diverse audiences into music production. Lewisham Music is continuing work to diversify its workforce and has seen a massive increase in new music leaders from varying specialisms and backgrounds. These role models are central to creating innovative music production programmes based on their lived experiences. We will also look to further enhancing key partnerships and collaborations with organisations such as Saffron who run accessible music tech courses across the UK, helping those who are under-represented in the industry to develop skills and build knowledge in music production, sound engineering and DJing. As ever, we want the young people we work with to shape our programme.

lewishammusic.org