Music for Youth Remix Prom 2021

Music for Youth’s carefully planned yearly cycle of events was thrown into disarray by the pandemic, but silver linings have included the success of digital festivals and a live but very different MFY Remix Prom in the Royal Albert Hall last November. Clare Stevens reports

Left: Performers at the Music for Youth Remix Prom November 2021 Photos: PhotoLaura.co.uk Last time Music Journal featured the work of Music for Youth (MFY), in our November/December 2018 issue, the organisation’s chief executive, Judith Webster, was looking forward to celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2020, while also developing a long-term strategy for involving and giving a platform to ensembles that had not previously taken part in MFY’s regional or national festivals, let alone its annual Proms at the Royal Albert hall in London. She was hoping to draw in more participants from the informal music-making sector, or from areas of the UK that had traditionally been underrepresented, and to build relationships with organisations such as Battle of the Bands, music education hubs or Indian classical music centres so that their flagship events could be presented under the MFY banner.

Needless to say, the 50th anniversary celebrations did not go entirely to plan. When the first lockdowns were announced in March 2020, MFY had proudly announced the sponsors for a celebration concert in the Barbican Hall, London, and the organisation’s annual programme of regional festivals was in full swing. Some events had already taken place, but one by one the festivals in Wakefield, Sheffield, Northampton and Hampshire were cancelled. Then it became apparent that bringing groups to Birmingham for the National Festival in July of that year would be impossible, and eventually plans for the 2020 MFY Proms at the Royal Albert Hall were also abandoned.

MFY’s channels of communication with young music-makers, however, remained firmly open throughout the first year of the pandemic. A Facebook post from early April 2020 set the tone:

‘We are all in this together. We were making music together before this and we will be making music together after this is all over. It’s about making each other happy in the meantime, and we want to help! Share your #HomeHappy sounds with us and tag @ musicforyouth so we can spread the smiles.’

From motivational messages urging home-bound kids to cheer themselves up by dancing round the house with their favourite pop songs playing full blast, to shared videos of practice sessions or Clap for Carers performances, to blog posts about mental health awareness and suggestions for lockdown listening, MFY’s social media team made sure the organisation’s community stayed in touch with one another in those bleak weeks when nobody could meet in person.

Behind the scenes, Judith Webster and her team reinvented the national festival as a completely different digital event called Elevate, which took place over five days in July 2020, on the MFY YouTube channel, showcasing the multi-disciplinary artistry of talented young musicians, leading discussions on topics that matter to them, and illuminating emerging artists hosted by broadcaster Remel London and classical music DJ Jack Pepper. In December #TheFutureIsNow, a two-day digital event, brought the year to a close with live workshops and music sessions, new music videos from 250 inspirational videos from young artists, and the chance for musicians aged 16-21 to be featured on Jason Singh’s live radio show. Support from Arts Council England’s Culture Recovery Fund and from donors to a 50th birthday appeal targeting adults who remembered the life-changing thrill of performing as children in MFY events, and a range of other sponsors, enabled all this activity to take place.

The first 12 months of the pandemic, said Webster in a statement in March 2021, saw everyone ‘face the challenge and opportunity of changing the way we do things; having to create new versions of what our work, learning, caring responsibilities, social lives and much more look like. It also highlighted the value of live events and MFY’s role in offering young people life-changing opportunities in music.

Above left: Remel London with young presenters on stage Above right: Cornwall County Youth Choir’s climate-change-themed performance Photos: PhotoLaura.co.uk

‘We are more committed than ever to working with valued partners – old and new – to retain and grow our music network and to giving young people something to aspire to and be inspired by. Inevitably, we have adapted our delivery methods and embraced technology, but live music making will always be at the heart of what we do.’

The result was a completely refreshed MFY programme for last year: ‘2021 – Remixed and reimagined’. For the first time the organisation established a theme for the year, reflecting the times and the impact of substantial change on young people and their music-making, and celebrating the many ways teachers, music leaders and young people have adapted, innovated, reimagined, reconfigured and rearranged how they make music together.

The intention was to run a hybrid live and online national festival under the REMIX 2021 banner in Birmingham in July, with strict COVID-19 mitigations in place, but a few weeks before the event rising cases in the Birmingham area meant that the live element was cancelled. The online event, however, was a huge success (as you can hear and see for yourself on YouTube under the hashtag #MFYREMIX2021 and by visiting the specially curated video walls on MFY’s website). It was underpinned by a ‘Mentor-on-Call’ programme, giving all the participants direct access to a professional musician or artist via Zoom, and ‘Sector Spotlight’, offering educational resources and inspirational ideas for music teachers.

Then at long last, on Wednesday 3 November young musicians, their teachers and music leaders were able to gather in person at the Royal Albert Hall for the #MFYPROM2021.

And what a Prom it was. What Harriet Clifford, editor of Music Teacher magazine, described in an overnight website review as ‘a deliciously refreshing mix of spoken word, orchestral music, choral works, rap, jazz, percussion, movement, digital content, poetry, pop, solos, and every other musical combination’ reflected Judith Webster’s view that after the long hiatus in MFY live performances, ‘we come together as different people. The world has changed.’

Clifford observed that ‘not only was the music diverse, relevant, moving, and topical – themes covered included the environment, the pandemic, the future, grief, social justice, joy, friendship, and family – but the performers themselves were diverse in every sense of the word. Nothing felt tokenistic, and musical talent was celebrated and showcased on its own merit. Pop/rock choir Rubik’s Cube sang and used Makaton sign language while performing, and the group consisted of more than 30 young people with special educational needs – the medley of songs ranging from The Beatles to High School Musical was joyful, life-enhancing, and filled with hope. Mother and son duo Shia and JL’s performance oozed passion, love and energy, and a gasp erupted around the Hall when, after his stunning performance on the clarinet, Shia told host Remel London that he is 10 years old.’

Bridget Whyte, chief executive of Music Mark, was equally impressed, writing in a blog immediately after the event that ‘there was a real buzz in the hall, and as the lights went down to start the event you could feel the excitement building. Not just in the areas where young people were seated, but in the boxes around ours as we all held our breath hoping that the magic had not gone and that the evening would inspire and delight as previous proms had done. It did not disappoint; indeed it was life-affirming and reminded me once again (as if I needed reminding) as to why music is so important to young people’s lives.’

The centrepiece of the Remix Prom was a huge creative project, All the Hall’s a Stage, led by Tim Steiner and bringing together 2,000 young people from all over England. Groups of young musicians between the ages of four and 12, of any instrumentation or vocal range and any ability were invited to sign up, and the result involved youth orchestras, school choirs, jazz bands, ukulele players and a digital percussion ensemble. Four anchor groups, used to working with MFY, held the whole

thing together: Musica Youth Jazz, Northamptonshire County Youth Orchestra, Cornwall County Youth Choir and Vocalize.

‘All the Hall’s a Stage was a response to, and in part a celebration of the last 18 months,’ explains Steiner. It was inspired by the way in which ‘the internet became the stage, the rehearsal venue, the green room, and the place to hang out. Everyone became a performer, whether they liked it or not. We tried to bring some of the essence of that into the MFY Prom. Everyone is a performer, everyone takes part, everyone has something to add, everyone is a listener, everyone has a part to play.

‘We celebrated the beautifully chaotic world of the internet, in which everything collides with everything else, and we played this off against a kind of unity that is only really available when we share the same physical space.’

Back to Harriet Clifford’s impression: ‘When the first notes of All the Hall’s a Stage – Collage echoed around the building, many audience members (myself included) looked at each other with raised eyebrows and an expression of alarm on our faces. Is it meant to sound like this? What’s happening? Good gracious, maybe something has gone wrong! Our rigid brains, constrained by preconceptions about what music “should” sound like, simply couldn’t fathom why we could hear Pirates of the Caribbean, Sunday Soul, Shine Jesus Shine, My Hood and multiple other pieces of music all at the same time. But the music from the stage, the pit and the stalls, conducted incredibly by Tim Steiner, shook us up, pushed boundaries, and reflected a much-needed reset – or, remix.’

As part of MFY’s commitment to having young people at the centre of the Prom and offering apprenticeship opportunities, Remel London mentored three young people, nominated by Wakefield Music Education Hub, Wandsworth Music Service and Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust, who co-presented the Prom with her. Through a series of workshops they developed their presenting skills, created scripts and helped to shape the presentation of the Prom. MFY’s social media channels were handed over for the day, to great effect, to four Young Reporters aged 19-21, who also worked on podcasts and written and filmed interviews with participants, that were released after the event.

This was a development of what had happened earlier in the year at the National Festival. ‘If you are going to involve young people more in what you are doing and give them more of a voice you have to accept that they will want to do things that you would never have thought of, that’s the whole point,’ says Webster. ‘You ask them how they want to use this platform and they might want to talk about climate change and Black Lives Matter, so you have to give them space to do that and ask yourself how that expresses itself through what we create. So then you’re immediately moving into allowing the event to be about issues, about different voices, that’s a slight shift of emphasis from something that is mainly about excellent performance, because it opens up more possibilities.

‘In an organisation like MFY, that will inevitably provoke debate but the important thing is that we are also making space for young people to engage with each other and with other young people who have got a similar passion for music, we need to be able to create an environment and offer spaces where that can happen in a really dynamic way.’

MFY is used to running large events, but the uncertainty about whether the Prom could happen at all, the difficulty of managing the restrictions and the wide range of participants meant that the logistics of this one were in a different league of complexity.

‘It did feel different,’ says Webster, ‘because there wasn’t the usual infrastructure underneath, but we also wanted to work differently, because there is no better time to try out a different way of doing things. We took the opportunity to think about what we want to take forward into the future alongside the things that MFY is known for.’

Looking back at her strategic plan for three years ago, while in one sense COVID-19 has thrown everything into the air, in another, having to deal with the situation has helped Webster and her colleagues to take the organisation more quickly in a direction it needed to go.

‘I’m really keen to make sure we take this opportunity to refresh and revitalise our national events; there will still be a national festival in Birmingham at the end of the summer term and I hope two Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in November, but they will take different forms and the routes to them will be many and various.’

mfy.org.uk

Below: Performers at the Music for Youth Remix Prom 2021 Photo: PhotoLaura.co.uk