Soundbites/HomeSounds

The Soundbites/HomeSounds project was a collaboration between Mancroft Advice Project and HomeSounds. The Soundbites element was a weekly open-door music-making session that works with young people at City Academy Norwich to promote music of any and every variety, build confidence and collaboration skills and provide a young-person led creative space to explore, experiment and learn.  

Soundbites ran for a number of years and worked with over 100 students in that time. Building confidence, developing fundamental musical awareness and skills and exploring individual creativity have made up the central components of our work with young producers, piano players, drummers, grime artists, singers and more. In that time the we worked in groups of all sizes, one-to-one, as fellow musicians and in leadership and participant roles. We have performed, recorded, shared and been to gigs. We had a dedicated talk from the fabulous Akala, took part in workshops with a professional jazz singer and supported in-school music curriculum activities. 

The HomeSounds invited young-people across Norfolk aged between 11-18 to tune into the world around them through the art of Field-Recording. In practical sessions, field-recording trips, soundwalks, live-streaming, listening sessions, microphone building and more we encouraged young-people to connect with both their natural and man-made sound-worlds. Through this listening connection we encouraged them to tune into themselves and their inner worlds. By doing this we developed their understanding for, and appreciation of, their role and place within the natural world, and the nature of their human relationships. We challenged them to be quiet for long-periods, consider the nature of their environment, understand the sounds and behaviour of animals and think about the science of sound.