Young People Make Great Music: Support the Next Generation

Music for Youth is launching a new campaign to highlight the brilliance of young musicians across the UK. We are asking everyone with an interest in music to get behind this campaign and to go out and see young musicians play live and support the next generation of musicians.

Young people make phenomenal music and many of the most talented musicians in the world started at a young age. Stevie Wonder, Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé, The Kanneh-Masons, and Kate Bush’s careers took when they were young. As did MFY Alumni Nigel Kennedy and Dame Evelyn Glennie who both performed at the Proms in 1982 and 1986.

Many of our national youth ensembles including the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra, and the disabled-led National Open Youth Orchestra are producing the stars of tomorrow. The legacy of events like BBC Young Musician of the Year and the Music for Youth Proms at the Royal Albert Hall are just two examples of life-changing launch pads to a career for young musicians.

Our campaign intersects with several recognised challenges for the music industry. Firstly, grassroots music venues are under threat of closure. Small venues have traditionally provided a circuit for young, early career musicians. When small venues close, it limits the number of stages young musicians have to develop their craft.

Secondly, classical music audiences are in decline. We know young people love classical music, so with only 2% of classical audiences being under 25, we need to be better at attracting young audiences.

Together, both these issues are holding back the UK music industry. Our campaign seeks to highlight the brilliance of young musicians, create more performance opportunities, and bring younger audiences out to experience live music. Music for Youth’s role is to advocate for young musicians and support them on their journey through staging performances in the community and at major venues. It takes a crew to put on a show and we are committed to career development in non-performance roles, so we train young people in non-performance roles at our events backstage.

WHAT WE WILL DO:

Over the next 12 months, Music for Youth will raise funds to carry out a national audience development research project with young people. We want the voice of young people to help shape the future of the music industry. We will ask our network of 40,000 young musicians across the UK for their thoughts and opinions so we can better understand what young people want and how the music industry can help.

In addition, we will:

•Support nine regional MfY young ambassadors to bang the drum for young musicians in their communities •Launch a new National Festival covering the Southwest, Midlands,

Northeast and Northern Ireland

•Relaunch Frequencies as the music agency for early-career musicians and those interested in careers in music industry •Create 100 new non-performance work placement roles across our events

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

•See page 05 for more information about ways to donate

•Go and see early career musicians at local venues

WIN £150 TO FUND AN EVENT AT YOUR SCHOOL OR LOCAL VENUE

Share your story with

#SupportTheNextGeneration

by 31st December 2022

Share your story online! We would love to hear how you have supported young musicians, from previous MFY events and at other music events nationwide.

Young musicians deserve an audience.

Ukrainian students performing at the LPMAM weekly concert The London Performing Academy of Music (LPMAM) is a new Music Conservatoire focused on Innovation, Diversity and Inclusion. The LPMAM’s vision is to prepare a new, diverse generation of musicians that will shape the future of the classical music industry and push it into the 21st Century.

LPMAM is also the first Classical Music Conservatoire to offer full instrumental Classical music programmes online thanks to Sintonus, the revolutionary teaching platform developed by LPMAM President, Dr.Stefania Passamonte to connect artists, students and Universities from all over the world, and to unite music from all over the world. Sintonus was created to overcome the physical and economic barriers of distance, and which now allows us to overcome even the tide of war!

LPMAM started its Academic Year 2021/22 with exciting international events and partnerships with renowned Music Institutions and Universities, among those were the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Kyiv and Kharkiv University of the Arts in Ukraine.

On 22nd February 2022, a delegation of LPMAM professors was due to fly to Kyiv for a week of concerts and masterclasses... Their flights were cancelled the day before, but they have been in close contact with our Ukrainian colleagues and students every day since then. Because the LPMAM partnership with the Ukrainian conservatoires preceded the war, LPMAM was the only conservatoire that could provide legal letters to request that music students be exempt from fighting and brought to London to complete their studies.

The LPMAM President set about helping those young people and preserving the musical future of Ukraine, helping organise military exemption documents for the students, and enabling the young musicians to journey through Europe while waiting for their visas before finally arriving in the UK. As a Council member of BPI- British Phonographic Industry, Stefania was also able to receive support from the UK Music Industry in finding homes for the students through the Home for Ukraine scheme and the National Musician’s Church, offering a space for regular performance and practice. She also set up the LPMAM Ukrainian Student Refugee Scholarship Fund, providing gifted students funding to make the journeys to Britain and scholarships to continue their studies as world-class musicians.

So far, LPMAM has managed to bring 51 students to safety, 30 of which are already studying physically in London. They’ve had tremendous help so far, but there are still another 40 needing to make the journey.