Young people from across Crewe celebrated International Youth Day in style last week with a live performance of their original music. ‘Life on Shuffle Live’ took place on International Youth Day, 12th August, at Crewe’s West Street Christian Fellowship Church and showcased various pieces of new music, which the young people have been busy creating since January.
From singing and DJing through to MCing, the unique show included a number of group pieces as well as solo performances. Watched by family and friends, members of local youth groups and industry professionals, the celebration was the first performance as part of an ongoing music project, ’Life on Shuffle’, which to-date has involved over 20 children and young people from the local area who are living in challenging circumstances.
Supported by Youth Music and using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the ‘Life on Shuffle’ project has been backed by Cheshire East Youth Support Service as well as leading music organisations The Love Music Trust and Brighter Sound. The project provides young people living in challenging circumstances access to a creative environment and industry professionals that they wouldn’t usually have, and is aimed not only at developing their creative, expressive and musical ability but also improving their health, wellbeing and employability.
“Music making can have a significant positive effect on both short and long term outcomes for children living in challenging circumstances, by helping them to build skills and develop resilience to the challenges they face, and Life on Shuffle aims to support this,” commented Paul Hine, Life on Shuffle project manager. “This first performance was a fantastic celebration and really demonstrated how much the young people involved have positively engaged with music over the past few months, and showcased their impressive creative ability.”
Sarah Marks, Youth Worker at Cheshire East Youth Support Services, said: “The music sessions over the past few months have proven invaluable for the young people involved. As well as producing fantastic original music, the group has bonded extremely well and as a result, we’ve seen a marked improvement in their team work and work ethic. To see them performing together and create such an impressive, original sound in such a short period of time, was really exciting and I’m looking forward to hearing what they come up with next.”
International Youth Day, now marked on 12th August each year, was created by the United Nations in 1998 and aims to celebrate the contribution youths make to society.
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