To help deliver its Future Sound music education programme, the Abram Wilson Foundation has announced that all donations received between 23-30 June 2020 will be doubled as part of The Big Give’s ‘Champions for Children’ campaign, which aims to support vulnerable children affected by Coronavirus.
The Future Sound music education programme pairs young people from disadvantaged backgrounds with professional musicians and a jazz promoter.
About Future Sound 2020
Future Sound’s second pilot project took place between January and March 2020 and was completed just before schools were closed by lockdown.
The project was delivered by seven emerging musicians from the 2019 Mercury Prize-nominated SEED Ensemble – led by Abram Wilson Foundation Career Development mentee Cassie Kinoshi – and was supported by Arts Council England and PRS Foundation as well as Big Give 2019 donors.
Future Sound 2020 involved 35 hours of weekly music workshops to 20 musically talented young people aged 11-18 years at Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, East London.
Over 90% of participants came from diverse backgrounds, 60% were eligible for Pupil Premium funding (a grant given by the UK government to schools in England to decrease the attainment gap for the most disadvantaged children, whether by income or by family upheaval) and over 20% suffered from mental health issues and/or parental incapacity.
The workshop programme culminated in an after-school performance on 13 March 2020 at award-winning local jazz venue, Church of Sound.
The Abram Wilson Foundation said:
‘Against the backdrop of Covid-19, our goal is to continue to deliver an accessible and inspirational music education programme.
‘We’re working towards developing a blended programme of music learning that can run both in schools – when that is possible again – and digitally. This means we can keep supporting disadvantaged young people from the Autumn and reach even more students in the longer term.
‘We are very excited to have already secured funding from both Youth Music and Arts Council England towards this new and innovative project. A big thank you to both, we are mega grateful for their support during this time.’
