“Mortal Fools deliver fantastic and creative youth-led work, and we are delighted to have invested in their music-making strand via our Trailblazer Fund. It’s vitally important that under-represented young people continue to be able to have access to life-affirming music projects like this.”
– Youth Music
Mortal Fools were funded by Youth Music via their Trailblazer Fund across Jan 2024 – Feb 2025. Our project was designed to help Mortal Fools integrate music-making into our artistic programmes and to increase access to creative opportunities for young people.
With youth mental health in crisis, grassroots youth music projects often provide a lifeline to support young people process trauma, feel heard, seen and get creative – music charity Youth Music champions the transformative power of music!
Their Youth Music Trailblazer fund offers grants of £2,000 to £30,000 to organisations in England to run projects for children and young people (25 or under) to make, learn and earn in music.
As an award-winning creative learning charity based in Northumberland supporting young people aged 7—25yrs, our priority is supporting young people to access and benefit from the arts and creative interventions who are neurodivergent, have social, emotional & mental health challenges and experiencing deprivation.
With youth mental health in crisis, grassroots youth music projects often provide a lifeline to support young people process trauma, feel heard, seen and get creative – music charity Youth Music champions the transformative power of music!
Their Youth Music Trailblazer fund offers grants of £2,000 to £30,000 to organisations in England to run projects for children and young people (25 or under) to make, learn and earn in music.
As an award-winning creative learning charity based in Northumberland supporting young people aged 7—25yrs, our priority is supporting young people to access and benefit from the arts and creative interventions who are neurodivergent, have social, emotional & mental health challenges and experiencing deprivation.
“Projects like these give young people more opportunity to try new things like music…It opens young people up to more ideas and ambitions about what they could do with their life.”
- Mark, Mortal Fools Young Trustee
The investment from Youth Music enabled our practitioners and young people to learn from professional musicians and to develop our company wide creative practice. Across the funded period, we co-created and recorded original music, wrote song lyrics, developed soundscapes, scored film shorts and animations, played with sound and instruments, and some of our youth theatre members, even did some singing!
“Youth Music funded us for a year to experiment integrating music-making, theatre-making, and our co-creation practice. We’ve always known that music is an excellent way to bring young people together and has a huge wellbeing benefit. Our rehearsal rooms and groups always have a good soundtrack, and music has always been a great way for our young people to express themselves, find things in common and make friends. Our Youth Music Trailblazer grant took this to a whole new level!
Youth Music are an incredibly supportive, inclusive, and forward-thinking funder – they trusted our team to do what we do and provided support and learning when we need it. We hope to continue our relationship with them in years to come and we’ve built music making into our young people’s programmes and groups.”
– Helen Ferguson, Creative Producer
HEADLINES & ACHIEVEMENTS
Across Jan 2024 – Feb 2025 thanks to the Youth Music Trailblazer Fund we:
- Supported 402 children and young people, including 142 members of Mortal Fools Youth Theatre.
- Delivered 116 participatory creative music sessions for children and young people.
- Supported 48 young people into other music making activities and projects beyond this project.
- c85% of core participants were CYP experiencing some form of disadvantage or barrier (and often with intersecting needs/circumstances).
“I can really struggle with my dyslexia but writing song lyrics has really helped me”
– Mortal Fools Youth Theatre Member
- Worked with 5 different groups of young people.
- Achieved 13 Arts Award Explore & 5 Arts Award Bronze.
- Organised/hosted/enabled 15 live events, performances or screenings.
- Gave paid work to 7 creative freelancers and 6 young people.
- Ran 7 CPD staff training sessions for 13 practitioners and support staff.
“We used the CPD days to share games, creative activities, ideas and feedback among the team, which have left me with a treasure trove of tools to use in my practitioner work. I have so many new ideas about how to tell stories with music and the enthusiasm of the creative team and young people alike has been a constant inspiration.”
– Calum Howard, Musician and Music Practitioner
- Co-created a series of live and recorded mixed artform music outputs including new tracks, music videos, short films, theatrical performance, audio soundscapes and installations. Check them out below!
- Developed innovative ways of working and practitioner music making capabilities embedding music-making across our youth theatre groups and creative interventions.
DIGITAL CONTENT - ON DEMAND
Original Music
Live Like a Legend – Ensemble Young Company 23/24; produced by Calum Howard
Live Like a Legend – Ensemble Young Company 23/24; produced by Calum Howard
Take A Step (Cross to the other side) – Ensemble Young Company 23/24; produced by Calum Howard
I've Been Waiting - BandCamp X Creative Mondays
Soundscape
Memory of Light – Mortal Fools Youth Theatre
Memory of Light – Mortal Fools Youth Theatre
Sounding Board Films
Save the World – Mortal Fools Youth Theatre filmed by Addison Keen.
One Last Adventure - Mortal Fools Youth Theatre filmed by FlyGirl Films.
Nonsense Rules – Mortal Fools Youth Theatre edited by FlyGirl Films.
Run Free - Mortal Fools Youth Theatre filmed by FlyGirl Films.
WHAT WE LEARNT
Embedding music into our co-creation practice has resulted in us learning more about multi-media artistic processes and outputs and implementing that into our work. The music-making element of the projects/programmes acted as a springboard to inspire new ways of making artistic work. This includes more directly music-related outputs like songs, lyrics, and music videos, and mixed-media outputs like soundscapes, theatrical audio pieces, short films, cabaret, and installations.
“Our youth theatre members have always impressed us with their imagination and writing skills, but getting to work on lyric writing has pushed them to play with meaning, rhyme and rhythm. Sometimes it's hard to express how you're feeling through words, but we've seen members being able to find a piece of music that just fits a scene or character.”
-Scott, Young People’s Practitioner
This expansion of our work has better met the needs of more diverse beneficiaries – especially those with social, emotional & mental health (SEMH) needs, SEND and neurodivergence, supporting them to thrive artistically. We have continued to apply this new practice across our programmes and will be starting a dedicated ‘mixed-arts’ group in the Autumn as a result.
“There have been a few times when I've been hesitant about whether teaching a group a piece of music will work. But every time I've been blown away by how they’ve embraced it and I've seen young people picking up instruments for the first time in their life and by the end of the session, they've come up with a melody to play or have made something as part of a group. It's proven to me that young people are so much more capable than we realise!”
-Scott, Young People’s Practitioner
Music-making proved to be an excellent methodology to support CYP’s wellbeing, mental health and creative health – especially with those facing multiple barriers and challenges. Using our evaluation tools, we could demonstrate a correlation between music-making and increases in the presence of the five components of wellbeing – they are Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning & Achievement.
“The work you have done with my daughter after losing her mum has been astronomical…if I was able to live an eternity then it still wouldn't be long enough for all the thank yous I need to say.”
- Parent of participant with SEND and SEMH needs
We have learned more about co-creation not only with CYP, but between artistic practitioners with different skillsets. The project has highlighted the importance of true co-creation - not 100% youth-led or 100% practitioner-led but truly collaborative. This involved using, sharing, and teaching skills, and developing ideas together.
“It's been great to see youth theatre members who have never played an instrument before and those with more experience, working together to learn from each other whilst developing their skills.”
- Scott, Young People’s Practitioner
LEGACY
This project has had a significant impact on our work, our practitioners feel more confident and skilled as music makers, and music making is now embedded into our regular portfolio of work and co-creation methodology as an arts organisation working with children & young people in co-creation and mental health & wellbeing.
“Use what you know and use what THEY know. It’s a collaboration. Don’t be prescriptive or top-down; they spend their whole lives being told what to do! Allow creative freedom and embrace wildness!”
- Calum Howard, musician and music practitioner.
Beyond this funded work, we will:
- Continue to develop a relationship with Youth Music
- Continue to deliver music-making activities across our young people’s programmes.
- Continue to offer young people opportunities to raise their aspirations, develop skills and boost confidence in music-making.
- Increase our knowledge of the specific music-making practices which enhance wellbeing.
- In Autumn 25/Spring 26, launch a new mixed-arts group in Ashington.
“I am so much more confident and now understand how to lead music making activities independently, I’m using instruments, Ableton and the midi keyboard all the time now with groups. At the start of the project, I used to just ask Scott (musician practitioner) how to do it but now I can explain and express my artistic ideas around music more clearly and put this into my practice with young people.
Because of the Youth Music project, we’re becoming more innovative in the work we are making. Drama isn’t just “stand up and say a script”, and our horizons have been widened as practitioners which supports us to broaden our work with young people. Our staff now have more confidence and capability, young people have more fulfilling experiences, the work is much richer and stronger and our audiences more engaged.”
– Kate Jeffries, Young People’s Practitioner
