18 October 2006
I went to the Park where I met with Lester Feckleton, music tutor, and head of levels 1 and 2 in music at The Park and City of Bristol College. Lester told me that his work is about engaging young people in music, and that the young people he works with range from beat makers through to performers. Lester said that he is keen to extend on the work through project activities and through linking up with other agencies, organisations and groups in order to do so. He mentioned Trinity as one such collaborator.
Lester said that it would be great if there were more connections between all the different work that is going on in Bristol involving young people in music. He suggested that new media might be a way of making connections that could then be followed up in physical ways. For example, if there was a local version of YouTube, whereby people could identify other musicians with similar interests to their own, in order that they might then meet up and jam together.
Lester said that young people can easily upload video footage of themselves performing to YouTube and locate themselves in a genre. Lester talked about YouTube being a window of talent and highlighted how it is now the norm for people to upload video, of themselves performing, to YouTube rather than just uploading sound files to the Web. He said that it would be great to localise YouTube so that it is easier for people to locate other musicians who they might be able to work with in their locality.
Lester then talked about the challenge in doing this being about engaging young people in the idea as they might wonder what is in it for them. He said that the benefit to young people would be if such an activity was a gateway to showcase or performance opportunities. Lester underlined the importance of facilitating real platforms for performance, in live settings, as well as virtual ones. Lester said that the platforms that can be stimulated by the web could also be useful contexts in which people could make music together. He suggested that young people might be supported to work together in this way and then upload the consequent collaborative work back onto a local web site or disseminate it through a podcast.
Lester said that there were two key areas; engagement and access; which relate to the potential of new media in his working context. Given engagement with and access to new media, there are opportunities for young people to use new media to their benefit.
Lester told me that there are many young musicians who are looking for other young musicians to work with. He suggested that any sort of on line notice board that could support people to meet each other virtually, so that they might then follow up this contact by actually meeting and playing together would be useful.
Lester said that one of the problems he faces is how people sometimes perceive of work that takes place in a college context. He said that people often understand college to be a formal context and so they associate it with school experiences. He said that when people have had negative experiences that they associate with schools they then are less inclined to be engaged in any college-based activities. Lester understands this to be an issue in that it often limits people in terms of the formal accreditation opportunities that are therefore not open to them. Lester suggested that through greater networking between agencies and organisations there might be ways in which people involved in informal music activities could take advantage of the accreditation that formal contexts can offer. We talked about the potential to work with young people from projects such as Remix.
Lester also talked about the importance of encouraging people to take their music back into the community, and suggested that new media might also have a useful role in realising this. We talked about other work that results in local content production and how music made locally might be an asset for such production.
Lester said that he thinks that many young people are switched on to how to use new technologies to their benefit and that agencies and organisations need to get up to speed regarding this so that they can extend upon the benefits that it presents.
Lester also talked about New Specialized Diplomas for 14-19 in Creative and Media and how schools are interested in such work because it taps into young people’s informal interests.
