Guest post by Anna Carter | Singer-Songwriter & Producer |
@annacartermusic 
/annacarterofficial 
/annacarterofficial
On Monday 30th October I attended the Young Music Ambassadors Forum, held at Access To Music in Norwich. It was the first time I had attended one of these sessions (Norfolk Music Hub hosted the first one back in April). This was the follow-up meeting for the young ambassadors, and I was interested to see what it would involve!
During the meeting we took part in activities and performances. We were all able to get our ideas across and share our thoughts. Our discussion centred around what being a music ambassador in Norfolk would entail; what roles and responsibilities we would have, and how we could use this title to represent other young musicians. We mentioned that going around schools could be a good idea, to expand young people’s knowledge of music in education.
An important aspect of any group is building connections. We agreed that creating a network involving ourselves and others from the local music scene would be beneficial, to help us build our audience and exchange music-related advice. The network could enable us to promote our gigs to more people and encourage a supportive creative environment, where we could learn from each other and gain feedback.
We talked about our first memories of hearing music, and the first memory of realising that music is what we wanted to pursue. We also discussed what barriers we feel prevents us from taking up music – such as funding, lack of experience, having little access to music lessons, or lack of confidence. We agreed that mentoring would be something we’d all be interested in, whether that means being mentored by a professional in the music industry, or whether we – the ambassadors – were to mentor others.
In between the discussion, we also performed to each other – Salman performed an original song called “Alive” (written in two languages – English and Urdu); I performed one of my own songs – called “Universe,” and Ved performed a Classical/Jazz piece on the saxophone. We gave each other feedback after each performance.
Our last activity was to write a song as a group, using phrases containing no more than 8 syllables, or beats. We were tasked with coming up with our own phrase – one that represented what music means to each of us, or why music is important to each of us individually. We then put these phrases together to make a chorus. Our song was called “Touch the Stars” and featured the following lines:
Music makes me who I am now
I’m shy, so music speaks for me
Music – when I’m down, picks me up
With my guitar, I touch the stars…