In 2023 we started a Pop-up Youth hub in the Haymarket Shopping Centre to target anti-social behaviour in the city centre and to give young people opportunities they wouldn’t normally have.
On our first day we set up a podcast and some DSLR cameras inside the old Vodafone shop that Haymarket Manager Dean Cross so kindly let us use.
Thanks to funding from The People’s Postcode Trust we were able to procure additional music recording equipment/ mobile music studio for our Exhibit Project which has proven popular with usually hard to reach young people.
Our first young person was SU who was very shy and quite but seemed very interested in the activities we had on offer, once we encouraged a few other young people in to get involved the conversations started flowing and the young people started opening up about things they want to achieve.
SU mentioned that he wanted to become a musician but wasn’t sure how or what to do with it, he is shy but feels when he is performing music it helps him feel more confident and more himself so I immediately told him that this is something we can help with. So fast forward to week two of the pop-up youth hub in the Haymarket and we took our mobile music studio, and the work began, SU started to record music with the help and guidance of the Community Development Youth Team and over the next few weeks he gained more confidence and recorded more music and even a music video.
2024 began and SU then wanted to take to the next level and officially release his music on all streaming sites, so we set about helping him create his own independent record label and distribution. SU has now released his first single on all streaming sites such as Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music, we have since taught him about how to collect his own royalties so that he can always have a revenue stream from his music and own the full rights to his music. SU also wanted not only to be a recording artist but also a performing artist, so the next step in his progression was to become performer. We set about to help get SU bookings so his first UK live performance will be on the 15th March 2024 at young peoples event called energize in Loughborough located at NSG arena where he will be performing two of his new songs
these sessions have helped me envision and achieve the things I want to do in life
SU