At a Glance
Bridging Beats is a music project for young people, aged between 9 and 16, in the Belgrave and Highfields areas of Leicester, offering them the opportunity to work with established local artists to make their own music and develop their creative voices. It is led and produced by Inspirate, funded by Youth Music and supported by Arts Council England. This page will describe what the Bridging Beats team and artists have been up to - watch this space to find out about the future of the project.
Have a listen to the music created by the Bridging Beats 2024 Young Artists
Artist Feature
Meet the Bridging Beats core project team - the ones who make the work happen!
There were many amazing artists and creatives working to make Bridging Beats happen - for the full list, please scroll down to our thank you section!
Weekly Sessions
To share Bridging Beats and encourage young people to sign up to join the weekly music sessions at the Highfields Centre and Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre, we delivered outreach workshops and assemblies and advertised the project in Belgrave and Highfields community centres and local primary and secondary schools.
Aspiring young music artists across Belgrave and Highfields came along to make their own compositions during the 12 weekly sessions at Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre and the Highfields Centre. These 2-hour workshops were led by the Bridging Beats Lead Artists, Shay Sharma and Aaron Hira, and provided a safe and welcoming environment for young people to experiment with new music techniques and technologies, and placed their voices at the centre of the project, encouraging them to lead the direction and content of the sessions.
They explored lyric writing, melody creation, sampling techniques, foley, found sounds and recording techniques, working, over the course of the sessions, on a combination of solo and group tracks.
The young artists used: music production software such as Logic, Live Loops, GarageBand and Splice, laptops, iPads and other specialist equipment like the loop station, DJ decks and, at the Summer Intensive, acoustic and percussion instruments.
Summer Intensive
The weekly sessions culminated in a 3-day Summer Intensive at Curve Theatre where young people from both Belgrave and Highfields got to apply all the skills and ideas they'd been building on and join together to work like a company in residence, creating an installation for An Indian Summer festival 2024.
For the majority of the young artists, the summer intensive was their first experience in Leicester’s cultural quarter and, for all of them, their first time seeing the inner workings of a theatre.
During the Summer Intensive, the Bridging Beats collective jointly planned, recorded, produced and designed the installation with professional artists and musicians, in response to the An Indian Summer festival theme 'We Gather'.
Sound Garden - Music, Sound and Visual Arts Installation
The Summer Intensive young artists responded to the ‘We Gather’ theme by creating a Sound Garden - a welcoming, open and relaxing space for people to come together, be immersed in sound and feel connected to one another.
Working with our Resident Designer and Lead Artists, they used motion sensors, sound playback buttons, and a loop of all their summer school and weekly session tracks to create the garden soundscape.
The bunting, designed by the group, represented a combination of what Bridging Beats means to them, how they would welcome people into the sound garden space and how their heritage and culture has influenced their musical tastes and creations.
The buttons, when pressed, played the voices of some of the participants talking about the theme, the installation and their experience being part of the Bridging Beats collective.
It was a brilliant moment when the Bridging Beats young artists and their families arrived at An Indian Summer festival to experience their Sound Garden installation brought to life.
The young artists experienced Shay and Aaron performing a live DJ and loop station set on the main festival stage and some of them even got up to assist and promote Bridging Beats, encouraging the festival audience to go and view the installation.
Thank Yous
Inspirate would like to thank the Highfields Centre and Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre for hosting our weekly sessions and supporting our outreach activities, our community partners for sharing the project, Curve Theatre, Youth Music and Arts Council England for supporting this work, and all the wonderful artists and creatives involved, especially the Lead Artists, Shay Sharma and Aaron Hira.
Finally, a special thank you to all the Bridging Beats young artists, and their parents, families and friends, who have made this possible. We can’t wait to see what you do next!
Lead Music Artist - Highfields - Aaron Hira
Lead Music Artist - Belgrave - Shay Sharma
Guest Music Artist - Tafadzwa Christine Gapara
Videographer/Director - Kieran Vyas
Camera Assistants - Abby Li, Hayden Sterland
Resident Designer - Sian Watson-Taylor
Producer - Jasmine Man
Executive Producer & Panel Host - Parmjit Sagoo
Inspirate Team - Sanjay Dattani, Jiten Anand
Funders & Supporters - Youth Music, Arts Council England, Curve Theatre, An Indian Summer Festival, Highfields Centre, Belgrave Neighbourhood centre, Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre
Watch this space to hear about what will happen next with Inspirate’s Bridging Beats project.