Every month we shine a light on a different Youth Music Initiative activity to celebrate the wonderful work funded through this important Scottish Government-supported initiative. In this month's Spotlight, discover how YMI support has impacted the youth development work at Turn The Tables, based in Edinburgh.
Rapper in the studio, credit Robbie Tolson.
YMI support has been instrumental in our youth work development, both for our staff and organisation as a whole.
Not only has the support directly benefited our beneficiaries but it has given staff valuable youth work experience. While helping our organisation network with leading service providers to help us establish ourselves within Edinburgh’s youth work provision and beyond.
Turn The Tables was founded based on supporting adults through music who are affected by homelessness and for our first few years of service delivery we worked with adult beneficiaries.
We soon learned that to really make an impact upon homelessness you must work with young people to positively influence real meaningful change.
DJing and digital music, whether that be dance music, rap or anything in between is at the fore front of youth culture.
"It was always football that young people were interested in, now they all want to be rappers or DJs & producers." - Youth worker from Police Scotland
Image credit Robbie Tolson.
Robbie Tolson, Turn The Tables Director: “We were very fortunate that YMI gave us our first experience in youth work through a partnership funded project, working alongside experienced youth work led organisation Spartan’s Alternative School. This support enabled Spartan’s and Turn The Tables to skill share and ultimately gave our organisation and staff the experience and confidence to plan our own self delivered YMI project.”
It wasn’t until mid-way through our own YMI project Angie’s Project that we fully understood what a positive impact our music could have on the young people from all walks of life.
We had two key separate beneficiary groups during Angie’s Project. Young people with learning disabilities and young offenders who were receiving support from Action For Children and later the VOW Project In Police Scotland.
Both groups had their own benefits unique to them.
YMI support enabled 1:1 studio sessions with the young people who were under Action For Children support having been groomed into crime.
"The Turn The Tables music sessions are the most popular activity our young people engage with. They attended weekly and the impact it can have on the young people is huge. From positively influence how they engage with our team to drastically reducing reoffending rates for serial re-offenders." - AFC Support Worker
Image credit Robbie Tolson.
One particular young person stands out. This young person was in and out of young offender institutions and secure units. Despite their interest in music they were initially quite challenging to engage with. You would be lucky to get a grunt or mumble from them throughout the whole session. It was obvious why, their distrust in adults and education was clear. But taking a youth work approach that we had learned from Spartan’s we were slowly able to build a relationship with them. Their confidence improved over time and their development both personally and creatively has been remarkable.
We would often think that he wasn’t listening, spent most of his session checking his snap chat then the following week would come in with a beat he made at home with some free software he found online using the skills he had learned in the YMI sessions.
He was a keen vocalist as well as beat maker, but he was too nervous to record in front of anyone. So, we would have to set him up, show him how to record using Ableton Live and leave the room.
With his confidence and his engagement in all aspects of his development improving the impact was clear. And clear to the local authority and his social worker, who made a commitment to carry on funding his sessions after the YMI project had ended. Which has had a huge impact upon the individual who now has been coming to the studio for nearly two years.
This young person’s confidence has reached new heights, and he now invites his friends to sit in in his vocal recording sessions which is amazing to be a part of. From not being able to record in front of people to having a studio full of people. And most importantly he hasn’t re-offended since coming to the studio.
Robbie Tolson says “With our young offender work it is clear that many of these particular young people have experienced a lot of trauma and often have undiagnosed learning disorders and desperately need a creative output. Young males are especially hard to divert from crime, as well as being creative I feel the studio sessions give them a sense of social status, given rap & dance music’s popularity. And this can be a huge motivator for these young people”.
The YMI funding also enabled us to work with Positive Paths CIC, delivering group workshops to their members.
It was our first experience working with a disability group and it has since paved the way for future funding opportunities within this area of working.
The group had a variety of abilities and needs, and our workshop set up of one DJ controller per participant enabled each participant to work at that own pace, with the music of their choice. The DJ mixes ranged from pop, rock, disco and dance music. The group had never tried DJing before but as you can see from the picture below the sessions were thoroughly enjoyed.
"It is so amazing that our members are able to engage with each session for so long, usually it is a struggle for the members to concentrate on one thing for more than 20 minutes but they are here, plugged in with their headphones for up to 2 hours, and they don’t want to leave." - Youth worker
Sam Riverside, image credit Robbie Tolson.
Since receiving YMI support Turn The Tables has gone on to establish two programmes external to YMI that have been directly based on the experiences and knowledge gained from YMI funded projects. Receiving funding from The National Lottery Community Fund for a disabilities DJ programme and earning sustainable income working as a trusted supplier for Police Scotland’s young offender VOW project.
Our experience with YMI proves that music really is a universal engagement tool that can attract and positively inspire some of the hardest to reach young people in society.