Youth Programs
This annual period has been full of excitement and new developments. Our young members have been strengthening their creative
talents and deepening their engagement with the creative fields that interest them most. We also welcomed a new member of staff
to our Youth Programs team, Ellie Purseglove, who has been assisting with the running and planning of Clubhouse activities
throughout the year.
Our now well-known rap/RnB group, Girl Zone, made up of five young girls (average age 11) have been working tirelessly all year on a
range of new songs, honing their live performance skills and brewing up ideas for new music videos. They released a video in August
for their song ‘Skating 4 Eva’ which now has 1,400+ views on YouTube. This video gained them the attention of the organizers behind
the new Peel Street Festival. On November 11 th they performed five songs at this festival for a public audience of at least 1,000+
people. Girl Zone were also interviewed by an online national music magazine, Noisey. Doubtless, the girls’ success is inspiring other
young members. The Young Swag Boys are three (even younger) boys who created the impressive song ‘Ball is Life’ in October and are
working on more tracks to come. Additionally, we have some young men from the community (between 16-18 years of age) who are
putting our sound studio to great use. They often book the studio for long sessions which allow them the space to explore new ideas
and experiment with novel production techniques. Music-making is getting ever more popular in the Clubhouse, leading to the
makeshift set-up of a second sound studio in the Coordinators office to accommodate all the growing interest!
On a final music note, we started running a Music Production class for young women between 18-25 years of age, an extension of our
very successful DJ’ing class. The Music Production class teaches the skills necessary to create electronic music from scratch. Taught by
resident DJ and producer Katie Campbell, it covers everything from song arrangement to sampling, modifying synthesizers, recording
instruments, mixing, building custom percussion kits and everything else necessary to make music in the digital age.
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