Sound Futures

Trying to negotiate today’s music industry when you’ve been out of the loop for some time can be a daunting task to say the least. But when you’ve been ‘behind the wall' in prison, you are talking about a whole other level of difficulty. Firstly, you are labelled as an ex-offender, a person who has made mistakes, or someone who has let society down. No matter that you’ve paid your dues behind bars. When you come out, the world doesn’t necessarily welcome you with open arms and for most jobs your CV is extremely important.

However, my colleague and creative partner Dr. Jacqui Norton and I believe that everyone deserves a second chance and since we have spent more than forty years in the music industry between us we have also observed that ‘your personal history’ isn’t what excludes you from opportunities in the music industry , it’s ‘your talent’ that matters and that’s why we created the Sound Futures workshop for prison leavers to help them navigate the today’s music industry and to see what’s possible on release.

Happily, we had partners in PRS For Music who also believed in the idea and hosted the event on our behalf on the 20th February, along with welcome sponsorship from the Arts Council England.

The truth is we weren’t sure if anyone would come; but come they did and happily so did our supporters from The Longford Trust, Finding Rhythms and The Irene Taylor Trust.

If you have been reading my blogs you will know that in the last few years that Jacqui and I have been working closely with Wayout TV to produce two series of The Lyrics, The Music & The Money! an in-cell TV series for HMPs in England in which we navigate the rollercoaster ride that is todays Music Industry. Basically, telling it like it is, with no holds barred... the good the bad and the ugly!

Then in the summer of 2023 we toured several HMPs in England doing face-to -face workshops.

We had ninety eight graduates who successfully completed, in their own time, our 61-page workbook which supported the series. We were particularly pleased with that since as you know prison life can be pretty chaotic! We launched the 6 x 30 minute programmes with WayoutTV in May 2023 and we didn't actually come off air till March 2024.

Anyway, we have just received our Arts Council Grant for a third Series. This time it’s on the ‘live’ industry, from busking (which can be achieved with little money, but supports confidence and well-being) through to festivals! Our key theme to support this series is employability, and so in addition to performing we are also focusing on opportunities ‘behind the scenes’ too.

For us the first Sound Futures workshop was a toe dipping exercise to see if there was an appetite ‘On the outside' for the Music Business knowledge we could provide… and it turns out there is.

If you’d like to read more about what happened at the Sound Futures Event click the link which will take you to the PRS For Music M Magazine.