Lewisham Music
Lewisham Music is an award-winning youth charity that creates positive change in young people’s lives, empowering them to fulfil their potential, and building happy and healthy communities through music. Last year we delivered a diverse range of musical activity to over 4250 children and young people across 70+ Lewisham schools, community settings and from The Fellowship, our state-of-the-art community music venue situated in the heart of the Bellingham Estate.
Working with industry professional musicians, practitioners and artists, our creative learning programmes offer everyone the opportunity to progress their passion for music and develop their skills and self-confidence - from tuition and groups for young people in schools, to programmes for aspiring young creatives.
Social mobility is at the heart of our work. We have developed an extensive network of partnerships across education, statutory services, and the voluntary sector to ensure we support children and young people that face significant barriers to participation, learning and progression. We are earning a national reputation for our work to develop communities, tackle social disadvantage and improve life chances through the power of music. Our programmes are co-designed with young people to ensure they are reflective of our communities, and youth voice is central to our practice.
We want music to be accessible to everyone in Lewisham (and beyond)!
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"There's no wrong answer in music."
Front Line Young Minds - looking at music and mental health
Lewisham Music collaborated with specialist equality charity 'brap' to co-create an 18 month EDI development programme including connected strands of workforce training and consultation, research and youth voice.
Following this work Lewisham Music trained, mentored and employed a team of 'Young Producers' aged 16-25 as part of London’s Borough of Culture. The Young Producers created a peer-led 'action research' programme exploring the connection between music and young people’s mental health. Their research led to entirely youth-led podcast series called ‘Front Line Young Minds’. Each episode focused on issues affecting young people and featured the views of music industry professionals, young creatives, music organisations and teachers.
Content researched and presented through the podcast included:
Music and identity
Women in the music industry
The role of music in influencing actions
The energies of music
Music genres and violence
Take a listen here: lewishammusic.org/front-line-young-minds
Young people presented their findings to local and national decision-makers at City Hall, The Music & Education Drama Expo and Sound Connections. Young people’s voices should be driving our actions. It’s time for change.