Celebrating Making Waves and our new music studio!
Last week, we had an incredible evening celebrating the launch of our Making Waves programme and the unveiling of our new studio space in South London. We were delighted to welcome guests from across the criminal justice, healthcare, and creative health sectors to spotlight the successful first phase of our Making Waves programme and showcase our new studio.
What is Making Waves?
Making Waves is a ‘through the gate’ programme supporting underserved individuals in the community by providing one-to-one weekly music sessions with a professional producer. Funded by London’s Violence Reduction Unit, the project aims to enhance transferable skills for employment, improve wellbeing and self-confidence, and foster positive relationships. Read more about Making Waves here.
Event Highlights
We heard from Making Waves participants, Isaac and Duwaine, who shared their experiences of the programme and the transformative impact the course had on their lives after recently leaving prison.
“Music has always been a passion…and where I’ve just come out of prison, there wasn’t much purposeful activity for me to do straight away, and I wasn’t working at the time. [Through Making Waves] I’ve been able to have a little therapy, a little outlet, some social interaction with people that are not judging me.”
Isaac, Making Waves Participant
Guests toured the new music studio, where they were able to listen to the music recorded by participants, and hear from our music producer, Tom Ireland, about the process of creating the album.
Partners from Divert, Billy Musgrove and Tom Rolt, shared their experiences working with us and the positive impact on the young person who participated.
“The Making Waves programme has had a profound impact on the development, wellbeing and self-esteem of our client over the past few months. The weekly sessions have steadily improved their communication and creative skills, with fantastic wrap-around support from the staff.”
What’s next?
Our interim evaluation of phase one of the programme has shown overwhelmingly positive results, with 100% of participants reporting improvements in wellbeing, 83% of participants experiencing better relationships with others, and 83% of participants identifying an improvement in transferable skills for employment.
To continue to build on this impactful work, we are seeking funding for the continuation of the project from January 2025 as our current funding will come to an end. You can help us in a number of ways:
- Donate Online – £100 covers the cost of one individual’s travel to our studio for a whole course
- Grants – If you are representing a Trust or Foundation, and you would like to know about how you can fund our work, please get in touch with Katie Weatherall [email protected]
- Donations Through Music – Finding Rhythms has a catalogue of over 100 albums of award-winning music created through our projects. If you would like to make a donation, you can do so through Bandcamp.
Making Waves, Vol.1 is available to stream on Bandcamp and Spotify now!