Raw Material Music and Media

Raw Material Music and Media is a community arts and enterprise hub based in Brixton in the London borough of Lambeth. Founded in 1993, Raw Material has run the Raw Sounds programme since 2012, which offers young people and adults experiencing mental ill health creative opportunities around music creation, production and performance.

In 2021, Raw Material received a grant from the Baring Foundation for Raw Sounds+, a new programme of creative courses for people from Lambeth’s diverse communities experiencing mental ill health and to offer further development opportunities to their ethnically diverse artist team.

This grant is one of 25 awarded in our Creatively Minded and Ethnically Diverse open funding round in the summer of 2021.

Lambeth is an ethnically diverse area of London and one of the more deprived local authorities in England. We are committed to making sure our Board, staff and artist teams reflect the communities we serve, and our participants, 75% of whom identify as Black, Asian or mixed heritage.

It can be hard for young diverse artists to develop sustainable careers in a sector, in which freelance work is the main form of work. With Raw Sounds+, we have been able to offer development and training to the ethnically diverse artists who lead our sessions – as well as targeted new music-making opportunities to more young people and adults experiencing poor to acute mental health issues.

The new courses we developed for Raw Sounds+ grew out of reflective sessions with artists as well as through our regular participant consultations, and included:

• a five-day intensive performance course led by one of Raw’s longest serving tutors Flo or Floetic Lara, supported by freelance creative Tagz. The resulting project ‘Raw Connect’ combined vocal performance, spoken word and free devising to create a final collaborative piece which dealt with themes of mental health, isolation, loneliness, racism and connection. The piece was performed at Paines Plough theatre’s pop-up, the Roundabout, and an excerpt can be seen here
• a new Advance Logic (music production) course led by tutor David Henry;
• 1-2-1 tuition opportunities in vocals and collaborative ensemble-making led by tutors Abimaro Gunnell and Rhoda Dakar;
• a new song-writing and music production course for women aged 40+ from ethnically diverse communities experiencing post-natal or menopausal depression, led by Eve Horne.

54 participants took part in the above courses, many of whom were new to Raw Material and have continued learning since.

All the artist leaders taking part received a bursary to use for a development or training opportunity of their choice through a new programme we called ‘Direct Your Own Development’. Inspired by Arts Council’s Develop Your Creative Practice programme, we offered bursaries of up to £300 for individuals to choose an area of skill and development related to their practice. 15 individuals took up opportunities ranging from keyboard lessons, mentoring in playwriting, mixing and mastering skills, jazz theory and musicianship, sound production courses etc. This was so well received that we are fundraising to run it again.

This project was a great opportunity for Raw to invest in artists who are rooted in our local communities, as well as reach out to new participants we haven’t worked with before.

It has also led to our co-founding, with Arts Council England, a new initiative called the Artists Represent Recovery Network (ARRN). This will be a professional development programme and network for ethnically diverse artists, who are either working in the field of arts and health or might be looking to diversify their practice to this field. The project is managed by London Arts and Health, with Raw Material and the Arts & Health Hub as delivery partners.

The first phase will see 10 established artists (with at least three years of practice) provided with professional skills development, peer-to-peer support, and on-the-job training in SLAM hospital wards to improve their artistic practice, skills, confidence, resources and networks to diversify the arts & health sector. Phase 1 will begin in September 2022 with an open call for artists. Watch this space!

I am still so excited after the performance yesterday. That was such a cool feeling. I really liked being pushed out of my comfort zone. Please let me know when there are other courses like that!
Mrs A.

Mrs A participated in Raw Connect at Paines Plough’s Roundabout Theatre after a long period during lockdown of feeling unable to engage digitally and then struggling with confidence to attend as in-person sessions.

The Raw Material team said:

This was the most expressive and open correspondence received from Mrs A and demonstrated the power of giving people a space to express themselves, helping them to feel part of a community and giving them a goal to work towards.