Laura Brewis from Young Musicians Project talks about funding boost and Sunderland becoming a Music City

Transcript

00:00So Laura, the Young Musicians Project has just secured another three years of funding.

00:05What will that enable you to do?

00:06Yeah, we're really excited about the funding from Youth Music.

00:10So it'll enable us to underpin our three Young Musicians Project groups,

00:14which meet in this lovely recording studio in Sunnyside.

00:18But it'll also allow us to run our community music projects,

00:21which are embedded projects trying to reach young people who might not have access to music making,

00:27and also help us develop our progression pathways for young people aged 18 to 25.

00:35And for those people who don't know about Young Musicians Project, what does it deliver in the city?

00:40Yeah, so Young Musicians Project started off as one group, but now is three groups.

00:45And it really does what it says on the tin.

00:47It brings young people together in a professional space to start writing and playing together.

00:54We concentrate on writing original songs.

00:57It's open access, so it's kind of anybody can come along.

01:00You don't have to have any qualifications or be able to play a musical instrument.

01:04So it's a huge range of young people who come along,

01:06and then we support them to start performing, recording and releasing their work.

01:11And you've had some very talented young people come through the doors, haven't you?

01:14Yeah, absolutely. We've got a really, really good track record.

01:19So Tom A. Smith, the two people, Dylan and Fraser, who tour with Tom A. Smith,

01:24they used to come to Young Musicians Project and still turn up occasionally on a Saturday morning.

01:28We have Faith Van Tarrow, she was a core member of the group.

01:31Isabel Maria, Lottie Willis, loads of people who are making the next generation of talent in the city.

01:39And it's just been announced that we're obviously a music city now.

01:42How will that help the young people who come through the project?

01:45I think it's so amazing as a kind of aspirational thing.

01:49So just to know that they are part of something bigger than the youth project that they come to.

01:53So it feels possible that young people from Sunderland can have creative careers,

01:58can become musicians, can make it in the industry.

02:01I think Sunderland can still feel quite far away from the centre of musical production.

02:06It still feels like maybe you've got to move away to do that.

02:08I think what Music City is going to show is that that's not true. You can do it here.