£30,000 Lottery boost for young Lyme Regis musicians (From Bridport and Lyme Regis News)

£30,000 Lottery boost for young Lyme Regis musicians

10:00am Wednesday 19th September 2012 in Lyme Regis By Rene Gerryts

YOUNGSTERS in Lyme Regis will benefit from a £30,100 year-long project to make music.

The money comes from Youth Music, which is associated with the Lottery and the Arts Council, and it aims to train young music leaders and give them skills to transfer to all spheres of their lives.

B Sharp director Fran Williams said the project would start at the end of the October half term and there would be a full day for recruiting candidates.

Those candidates will work alongside musician Pete Wild to create three large-scale events.

The project will centre around the Hub one night a week.

Fran said: “It is very grass roots. It is about young people developing their own ideas about what sort of things they would like to see happening in Lyme and then they will work towards three main, fairly large scale events.

“We are also linking with Woodroffe to introduce the social enterprise side of things and link up with the business course there.

“It is really superb.”

Mr Wild said: “It really is good news, it really enables us to carry on with the peer-to-peer stuff we do.

“The confidence they gain by standing up in front of people in performances and doing something you enjoy has led to a huge change in some of the young people over the last couple of years.

“And the confidence they gain spills over into their everyday lives. They are so enthused by what they can do. It is about unlocking their potential.”

Chairman Ayvin Rogers added: “It is aimed at encouraging leadership among young people through the medium of music. It is not just music.

“We are also going to be running a few workshops on project planning so if they want to have events then we can help them go through the process of planning it, costing it and perhaps test some of their ideas.

“These are skills that are transferable to any kind of project or job they want to do.

“Anybody who wants to be trained in leading can approach Fran or come to the workshop on project planning.

“It is not just for musicians – it could be anybody.

“They might want to run a record label in the future or go into band management.”

Mr Rogers will run the project management workshops and will be working closely with Woodroffe School.

B Sharp is expecting to be confirmed as a charity by the end of the month and is already a limited company.

Mr Rogers added: “We started in 2007 with just some small workshops and testing some ideas out and it has grown from there.

“We have just finished Coastal Voices for the Cultural Olympiad and more than 180 were singing for the final piece but at one time 300 were involved and had a taste of singing workshops so we are reaching a lot of youngsters.”

Before the recruitment day there will be a holiday jam sessions project combined with Bridport Art Centre and a lyric writing course at the arts centre that started on Monday and continues until Christmas.

Anyone interested can contact Ms Williams on 07968 177663.