April 2025 – April 2026
As we come towards the end our our year-long Youth Music Trailblazer funded project, it’s amazing to look back at this exciting journey, which has been full of surprises.
We set out to develop our organisation to become more youth-led and to make sure that our work is meeting the needs and aspirations of our young people, especially those who face the most barriers to accessing musical opportunities.
Listening to our young people’s wishes and needs at the start of the project, we identified 4 main strands of work which we pursued. These are:
rock bands – Romaband – nasheeds – not accessing mainstream education
Rock Bands
26 of our young musicians aged 11-16 in Todmorden, many starting completely from scratch, have been working really hard to nurture their new rock bands. Expert mentoring from our music leaders, Jack Hogg and Dickon Kyme-Wright, has empowered these young musicians with the musical, communication, leadership and teamwork skills to dream big and to work thoughtfully on every aspect of bringing their bands to life.
With regular rehearsal sessions during and after school time and during the school holidays in various venues around the town we now have 7 different bands with styles becoming ever more distinctive and musical skills and confidence growing rapidly. They have moved from playing cover versions to writing some original songs, expressing their own thoughts and ideas.
One of the initial ideas articulated by these young people was that they wanted to do gigs and put on a music festival and this desire has pushed them to be more and more independent in organising rehearsals, arranging repertoire and planning performances.
Since the project started last April, our bands have done 4 public gigs –
trying out their first material at Todmorden High School in July
youth takeover on the Saturday of Pennine Guitar Festival in September
special guest appearance with Guardian and NME music columnist, John Harris, at Todmorden Book Festival at Todmorden Hippodrome Theatre in November
youth bands festival at influential grassroots music venue, The Golden Lion, in March
Romaband
The spark which ignited Romaband was from chance encounters on the street in Halifax, where the local young people from the Roma community saw Music for the Many tutors on several occasions arriving at a local rehearsal venue with instruments and approached us, saying “We want to play and sing!” “When can we do a Gypsy band?”
Over a series of very well-attended sessions facilitated our music leaders, Daniel Bath, Dickon Kyme-Wright, Jen Trott and Tony Simms, our young Roma musicians gradually took more ownership of the space, a community room called Halifax Unity, in the heart of their neighbourhood. Sessions were youth-led with impromptu spells of learning chords to the songs, karaoke singing, gypsy dancing and big jam sessions on Romani songs – sometimes 2 different jams sessions simultaneously at each end of the room.
Our young musicians were empowered by having an indoor space where they can gather freely, which is a very highly-valued thing in the Roma/Gypsy community because traditionally they have often been excluded from public places in Central Europe and here in Britain. These young musicians have assumed a leadership role by teaching their repertoire of Romani language songs as well as their instrumental, vocal, performance and dance styles to our music leaders. By being open and keen to learn and listen and sometimes make idiots of ourselves, we are starting to break down barriers and build trust across cultural differences.
Roma children and young people face a higher rate of exclusion from school than any other group and many instances of institutional racism. We have found that these cultural activities, where many of these children and young people excel and express themselves very powerfully with an awareness of artistic tradition and cultural heritage, are a vital and very positive way to engage with the wider community and take a place in public life. This activity educates others about the richness, skill and diversity of Roma literary and musical traditions, as well as self-organising structures based on trust, which are clearly evident in our music and dance sessions.
Some of these young people have outstanding skills as instrumentalists, singers and dancers and our music leaders are on hand to nurture these skills and help to find suitable pathways in music education and performance opportunities.
Since the start of this project, our Romaband has given public performances at:
Halifax Unity in June 2025
People’s Park Festival in August 2025
Trinity Academy, Sowerby Bridge in December 2025
The Piece Hall, Halifax in April 2026
Nasheeds
Muslim children and young people in our area have historically suffered very high rates of exclusion from mainstream music education because of a failure by education providers and cultural organisations to engage with their cultural needs.
The young people at Todmorden mosque asked us to run nasheed sessions because they enjoy singing and hearing nasheeds (Islamic devotional songs) as a way of expressing their faith and cultural identity and their sense of community. We set up some singing sessions with the boys’ class at the mosque, led by Hussnain Hanif, a professional nasheed artist. The mosque is a good, supportive environment for these sessions, but, in order to open this opportunity up to all our young people, we have run additional sessions in local schools and in other community settings. During the project the Nasheed Choir has given public performances for the whole community at:
Todmorden Town Hall for the Community Iftar in March 2026
Centre Vale Park for the Reopening Festival of the Bandstand in March 2026
In addition to this work in Todmorden, another group of young Muslim people in Halifax, who are passionate about qawwali, but face financial barriers, approached us asking for some help in putting a qawwali group together with coaching in the necessary vocal, harmonium and tabla techniques. Our music leader, Daniel Bath, has been mentoring this group.
In addition to various local sufi gatherings, they have given public performances at:
Urs of Chambi Wali Sarkar, Slough in February 2026
North Halifax High School, Halifax in March 2026
The Piece Hall, Halifax in April 2026
not accessing mainstream education
This project has given us the flexibility and extra capacity to work outside our previous mainstream provision.
Our music leaders have made home visits to young people not attending school, because of exclusion or because of physical and emotional barriers or neurodiversity. As well as giving these young people access to practical music education, this has given us the opportunity to explore creative music-making as a means of communication and emotional processing. The home visits allow these young people to lead their own exploration of musical experience – playing a variety of instruments, singing, listening, composing, jamming and working with other musicians in a safe social space. In some cases these young people have joined in ensemble music making in our ensembles outside school and our performances, giving them social contacts and activities which they wouldn’t otherwise have.
We have worked with Todmorden High School to engage students, who are internally excluded from mainstream provision, in youth-led ensemble music-making, facilitated by our tutors. This has involved creative arrangements of pop songs, Latin American group percussion and some classical minimalism and solo performances for the rest of the group. This has allowed the young people to have a positive experience of engaging with activities in school, of sharing their skill, of teamwork and to develop greater self-esteem and community awareness. As a result, some of these students have begun to join in with other ensembles outside the sessions.
The project has also allowed us to work with young people seeking asylum. Having recently arrived in the UK with limited English language, these young people are unable to engage fully with school. Music sessions allow them to use their home language, giving them a break from the stress of having to use English. Sharing and teaching songs from their home culture also builds their self-esteem and gives a stronger sense of belonging in the host community. Our music leader, Daniel Bath, has been facilitating weekly music sessions in Todmorden for teenage asylum seekers from Sudan. They have learned to play guitar, drums and keyboard to accompany Sudanese folk, classical and pop songs in Arabic and Zaghawa languages. One of the Sudanese songs has become part of our Youth Orchestra repertoire, played by many other local young people.
One of our Sudanese musicians composed this song in English, using a Sudanese melodic style, to celebrate learning English and his first experience of cold Yorkshire winter weather:
At the other end of the age-range, we have also been working with an early-years provision in Todmorden for children with SEND. Through intensive interaction and performance, our music leaders have facilitated free exploration of musical expression to develop story-telling, communication, language, emotional regulation, listening and motor skills. This open access to musical activities and expert guidance has encouraged the children to be confident as musicians with some basic instrumental skills and repertoire.
Outcomes and next-steps
As a result of this project we have made lots of new musical friends, formed lasting links with other arts organisations and venues and embarked on several other new collaborative projects:
We are creating a new music, drama and dance project with our Roma youth in collaboration with Kasko San and Northern Broadsides.
We now have offers from The Golden Lion, Todmorden and The Trades Club, Hebden Bridge to host regular youth-led gigs, where our young musicians can get more first-hand experience of work in the music industry.
Our Nasheed choir has started working with Todmorden Folk Festival to broaden the festival’s reach and representation and engagement of our Muslim and South Asian communities. Our youth Qawwali group, the only local group of its kind performing traditional qawwali, has been asked to perform at lots of events around West Yorkshire.
QUOTES:
“The band was excellent. The bass player was playing proper bass lines and the singer was really good, being able to switch between The Sun Goes Down and Everybody wants to Rule the World so convincingly. Keep doing it. The world needs good bands.” (John Harris, on our youth bands’ performance at Todmorden Book Festival)