About Music Worldwide
Music Worldwide are an established arts and music organisation and have been the recipient of three previous ACE grants concerning their hugely successful Connecting Cultures schools outreach and performance programmes. Currently, Music Worldwide are educational partners with Norfolk Music Hub and Norfolk County Council Virtual Schools Team, who provide educational support provision and housing for unaccompanied 14-16yr migrant & refugee children and YPs.
Music Worldwide regularly co-produce events with independent venues, festival organisations and arts delivery partners including; Sustenta Carnival, WOMAD Festival, Afri-Fest East (Few Good Men), and Wild Fields Festival.
Music Worldwide also work as events consultants for Norwich City Council, providing event management services for their annual Lord Mayors Celebration Weekend, which attracts over 25,000 visitors to the City each year.
Music Worldwide presents their own independently funded annual multi-cultural educational event at the end of August called Drum Camp, which attracts 100s of music and dance students and adult learners from across the UK.
The Lord Mayors Celebrations and Drum Camp event will form part of the Connecting Colours project visibilty and reach.
Connecting Colours - Project Overview
Integrating a sustainable approach to making with a local engagement programme for CYPs and newly arrived migrant communities.
ACE Grant Application £29,520 Ref NLPG 00789975
The Connecting Colours project is primarily an outreach arts project that will celebrate diversity, inclusion and cohesion through creative arts skills acquisition across a wide educational sector, as well as within minority ethnic families newly settled in Norwich. The end visual artworks from the outreach making sessions will be seen by a wide demographic of public through project engagement in 2 large public events, as well as local schools community fetes and events.
Outreach Project Participants & Delivery:
Platforming creative products, collaboratively devised by members of refugee and migrant families, primary school children and undergraduate fashion and textile degree students, the outreach will deliver a series of hands-on art sessions creating festival flags and bunting with recycled materials, innovative techniques & international pedagogies. This in turn, will decorate 2 significant public events taking place over the summer, including the Norwich Lord Mayors Celebrations.
Following the events, the flag and bunting products can be widely used among the participant outreach groups for other opportunities and gatherings such as exhibitions, school fetes and community focused events.
A total of 23 outreach making sessions will be delivered between June and July across the three participating groups; Norwich University for the Arts (Fashion & Textile Students - 3 x day workshops), New Routes Integration Charity (Migrant and Refugee Families - 4 x half day workshops) and Y4 & 5 children from 8 schools schools across Norwich and Norfolk - (16 x half day making sessions at 2 per school).
Music Worldwide will lead and manage the project, partnering with outreach delivery partners Sustenta Carnaval, an award winning organization which aims to reduce, reuse, recover and recycle materials and fabrics reclaimed from the Rio de Janeiro carnival.
In addition to seeing their creations paraded at the Lord Mayors weekend procession, the outreach participants and their families also have the opportunity to attend the Music Worldwide Drum Camp as creators, sharing experiences with new audiences and taking part in music, dance and singing workshops in a festive and celebratory and multi-cultural environment. Music Worldwide Drum Camp
Site-installation crew opportunities will also be offered as part of the project offering, with New Routes Integration family members gaining valuable work experience and income opportunities alongside event professionals.
All materials used to create the flags and bunting will comprise fabrics up-cycled and reclaimed from the famous Brazilian Rio Carnival Parades.
Flags:
The creative process will invite 30 Norwich University of the Arts Fashion & Textile students to design and create 12 x 1.5m x 2.5m festival flags, using a colour palette made from the recycled materials provided. From final designs, the participants will make the full size flags with the support of the Sustenta creative team.
Bunting:
Creating over 150m of bunting will form the key activity for both New Routes Integration participants and pupils from 8 Junior Schools. The bunting will decorate 10 workshop tents and a main performance stage at the Drum Camp and will be used to decorate displays and features at the Lord Mayors Celebrations and local events at 2 of the participating schools.
Fabricating bunting is a widely accessible group activity across all ages and skills levels. Members of Sustenta will lead all workshop sessions and assist in the final assembly processes.
Education and Community Project Partners
New Routes Integration:
New Routes Integration is a Norwich based charity which helps newly settled families integrate into the wider society. New Routes aims to develop the capacity and skills of the disadvantaged minority ethnic individuals and communities of Norwich to support the fulfilment of potential and enable active involvement in society.
4 x 3 hour weekly Bunting creation workshops with newly settled family groups will be facilitated at New Routes Integration at their Norwich Community Centre. In addition, site crew work will offer some adult family members paid work during the event build and knockdown periods.
Norwich University of the Arts:
Situated in the historic city of Norwich, the University is a vibrant community that forms the beating heart of the city and region’s arts and cultural worlds. Fashion and Textile courses at the University provide engagement with textiles processes including print and embellishment. The University encourages critical reflection and experimentation with ideas, processes and materials by attending talks and workshops, gaining new networks and by taking part in community projects, programmes and competitions.
Selected students will take part in 3 x full day Flag creation workshop sessions, which will be facilitated at the University Fashion and Textile studios and led by Sustenta Carnival teams.
Junior Schools:
8 Junior Schools will partcipate in the project with Y4 & 5 pupils taking part. Each School have participated with Music Worldwide on their previous ACE funded Connecting Cultures Project.
By participating in the project, children will be exposed to working with international artists that will highlight and celebrate the diversity of our community. All participating schools actively welcome visiting artists into the classroom environment to encourage creative learning and community engagement.
2 x 3 hour Bunting creation workshops will be facilitated in an afternoon classroom setting at the 8 partcipating schools. Parents of children participating will be offered discounted ticket rates to attend the Music Worldwide Drum Camp event, with their children entering free. The Lord Mayors Weekend is a free event over the weekend of 12th/13th July for the public.
Safeguarding and Well-Being:
Music Worldwide operate a robust Safeguarding Policy throughout all its projects involving work with CYP or vulnerable adults. As Designated Safeguarding Lead, Music Worldwide adheres to the following legislation and guidelines as part of its own working practice, and of those organisations in which Music Worldwide has entered into partnership agreements, or is in collaboration and/or training with.
• The Human Rights Act 1998
•Equality Act 2010
• Norfolk Music Hub Safeguarding Policy 2023/2024
• HM Government ‘Working together to safeguard children’ 2018
• NSPCC Safeguarding Policies & Procedures Oct 2023
• Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership ‘Child Safeguarding Practise Review Processes Guidance’ 2023
The Music Worldwide recruitment process undertakes a standard protocol for due diligence checks to ensure that the process is consistent and fair for all partners and visiting artists, and communicates clearly to shortlisted candidates about the potential of online searches and DBS checks as part of the recruitment process.
All participants working with the company must confirm they have read and understood the Music Worldwide Safeguarding Policy Document, before they can commence work. It is the responsibility and policy of Music Worldwide to operate a robust recruitment process when engaging any temporary staff person, artist or workshop leader when their work involves contact with CYP or vulnerable adults.
Data and Information Gathering:
From the outset, careful planning of how the project activity would be evaluated and recorded will form an important part of the overall project aims and objectives. Establishing the benchmarks that would be used to measure the successful outcome of the project was expressed in a concise and quantifiable form for assessment after the event.
Documentation will gathered in various forms such as questionnaires and interviews. Film and sound recordings from radio programmes,outreach project work, event attendance will also document the project. The feedback forms will gather data and inform future delivery planning and funding strategies.
Aims and Objectives:
Through the Connecting Colours project, Music Worldwide will undertake its own professional development, trying out new approaches, reaching new or different audiences, creating and commissioning new work, and working with new people.
Our aim is to give project participants the ability to see themselves as part of a culturally diverse society and demonstrate how minority and majority communities of all ages and backgrounds can influence each other through shared creative outputs and processes.
Connecting Colours will contribute towards social and racial cohesion by building positive images, new connections, creative artworks and event participation among people of different backgrounds and ages in sustainable art activities.
Part of the projects aim will be to integrate newly settled migrant and refugee families into the wider society, and also be a pathway to create future employment opportunities for adult participants within the events or arts sector.