2001

Throughout April and May young musicians from across the County have taken part in a series of one-day workshops celebrating the art of song-writing in the Powys Youth Music Project.

Tutored by local professional musicians, the sessions which ran in Llanfyllin, Llanfair Caereinion, Newtown, Machynlleth, Welshpool and Llanidloes, allow young people to come together and work as a group for a day composing 1 or more songs. Styles vary from Hard rock, to ballad, to reggae or techno, and though some teenagers bring their own instruments and expertise, others, who have never played before, borrow instruments from Arts Connection and learn a new skill.

On May 20th, young musicians from all the different towns will meet up at Theatr Clera in Welshpool, for a final workshop composing more material, and then an evening “Big Bash” concert presenting their work.

Powys Youth Music Project is funded by the Arts Council of Wales Lottery Fund and is supported by Powys County Council Youth Service.

2002

It had been intended to run the 2001 PYMP in roughly the same format as the previous year’s project, that is, a series of 2 hour taster sessions in schools, closely followed by a series of one-day workshops held during weekends in community centres and youth wings. The finale to the project was The Big Bash, a multi-workshop day and evening performance of devised work at Welshpool High School and Theatr Clera. Indeed this is what happened but with the one major difference being the effect that the outbreak of foot and mouth had on the running of the project. The epidemic forced the postponement of the day-long workshops for about six months, thus breaking the link in many young peoples’ minds between them and the taster sessions. This resulted in attendance being at best about one third of the previous years’ attendance.

Taster sessions were held in February in five high schools – Machynlleth, Newtown, Llanidloes, Welshpool and Llanfair Caereinion. It had also been hoped to run a taster session in Llanfyllin High School but we were thwarted in this apparently by internal school politics!

A smaller number of tutors than in previous years was used in order to try and give some sense of continuity to sessions. Tutors employed this year for the tasters were Tommy Mills, Roxane Smith and Pete Beresford. In many ways these sessions were the most successful element of the 2001 project largely, as it turned out, due to the peculiar circumstances of the year. The attendees appear to have gained a lot from the sessions and with a maximum number 18 people, split into two groups attending over the two hour period, the tutors were able to give fairly close attention to each young person.

The one-day workshops took place in September, once the F&MD had started to subside and in was considered safe to start using community spaces again. Workshops were scheduled for Welshpool, Llanfair Caereinion, Llanfyllin, Machynlleth, Llanidloes and Newtown. Attendance was generally poor with no-one turning up for the Newtown session. With the exception of Welshpool, which was one of the best attended venues, numbers were anywhere from 1 to 4 in contrast to previous years were anywhere from 6 to 10 was the norm. High attendances are not a feasible proposition in Powys anyway due to the rural nature of the area and the almost non-existant public transport, but even so attendance for 2001, while not unexpected, was none the less disappointing.

Once again a small band of tutors was employed for the sake of continuity, these being Tommy Mills, Roxane Smith, Kevin Torne and Dave Kidd.

The Big Bash was run with just four tutors instead of the usual six. This was partly due to an error in the booking of Theatr Clera resulting in Tommy and Roxane being unavailable on the day and partly due to the anticipated lower attendance for this year.
Tutors employed for this were Kevin Torne, Dave Kidd, Pete Beresford and Rees Wesson.

Gary Northeast. PYMP co-ordinator for 2001.
30th January 2002.

2003

This year the Powys Youth Music project, which ran across North Powys for three months provided 276 participation places for young people to take part in music workshops and master-classes led by experienced musicians. Some of those who took part already played instruments or were part of musical groups, some had no experience but were keen to try out a range of equipment that was provided for the project.

Music and words were created, developed and performed in Welshpool, Newtown, Llanfyllin, Llanfair Caereinion, Berriew and Machynlleth. At the end of March there was a final event- the Big Bash/ Twrw Taro at the Theatr Clera in Welshpool where young people from all the centres where the project ran came together to share their creations with an invited audience. ‘Wicked’ was the main comment from the young musicians taking part!

A group from Berriew also performed in the Powys County Council showcase of all musical projects in Powys at Theatr Hafren in Newtown.

We would like to acknowledge the enormous input of Powys County Council outreach youth workers in the centres where the project ran and of our tutors Tommy Mills, Kevin Torne, Gary Northeast, Dorando Orsi, Tony Skeggs and Matt Donaldson.

This project was supported by the Arts Council of Wales and Powys County Council’s Music Department.