New youth project for 2023 supported by Ty Cerdd!

We are really excited to have been awarded Tŷ Cerdd Lottery funds this year. We will be using the funds from their ‘Inspire’ grant stream to support our first ever youth project – ‘Young People Investing in Music’!

If you're aged 14 - 25, learning an instrument at any level, looking to develop your  musical skills, or play with other people, this project is for you.

Our expertise as a community music enterprise, focuses on making music accessible to anyone with a basic level of ability. This project will engage people aged 14-25 in the Cardiff area in a weekend of workshops culminating in a performance. 

Our Musical Directors, multi-instrumentalist/composer Dr Rob Smith and jazz drummer Mark O’Connor  will run the sessions and members of the band will support throughout, creating an inclusive and exciting musical opportunity for participants.

The project workshops will take place on the 11th and 12th November 2023 – and you can sign up here: https://www.wonderbrass.org.uk/project-blog/sign-up-for-our-workshop

We’ll be using our own repertoire (which is focused on creative inclusive musical structures that facilitate musical participation) to allow the participants and regular group members to perform together. 

The material will include original compositions written for Wonderbrass by Rob Smith and other people who have previously been commissioned by the band, as well as our own arrangements of classic and contemporary popular music. Workshops will focus on learning the shared material and discussing how to improvise and extemporise upon it. Participants could be people learning or playing proficiently on any instrument, including percussion, and could include vocalists (singers/rappers). 

We will encourage participants to explore their creativity; to creatively participate in music making, bringing their own ideas to the project and exploring them with guidance. 

We believe that young people can engage in musical participation on a deeper level if they have a creative stake in the music created and performed. We hope that they will learn a lot about the creative and social process of music making in a safe and inclusive environment.

This project is about showing young people what is possible through musical participation!

If you’re interested in hearing more about this, drop us an email on wonderbrasswales@gmail.com