East by North East

East by North East is a Youth Music funded project led by GemArts and working in partnership with the The Glasshouse ICM, The Soundroom, Excelsior Academy, Life Transformation Church, North Benwell Youth Project, Benfield School and Gateshead Council.

The project provides high quality weekly music making opportunities for more than 270 young people from the Black Asian and Minority Ethnic, refugee, asylum seeker and wider communities, based in the West and East end of Newcastle and Gateshead. The project seeks to provide diverse music making opportunities and holds youth voice at the heart of the project. As well as developing participant skills, East by North East also focuses on further developing the skills of local music leaders to meet the demands of culturally diverse communities, as well as using music as a creative intervention to address issues.


Want to become a Music Leader? Sign up here and our Participation team will get in touch. 

Find out more about the project through the short films about East by North East:
 
Phase Four of the project started April 2020 and has built on the successes of the past iterations, coming to a close in June 2023 - read Music Leaders George Otigbah and Georgia May's blogs detailing their experiences.


 

Previous EBNE videos

The programmme includes accreditation through Arts Award, progressions routes, recordings, sharing events and performances. More than 45 young people have already achieved Bronze Arts Award, a nationally recognised qualification which documents the hard work they put into the project and how far they have come along the process.

We have demonstrated how music making can raise young people’s confidence, aspirations, opportunities and skills, increasing motivation and helping them to be empowered, whilst celebrating their identities and the region’s rich musical and cultural diversity.

The project began in 2013, and since then East by North East has been recognised as an ambitious, leading example of partnership work, delivering alternative music making provision for young people who previously had no access to opportunities of this type. The young people working on the project have developed not only new music making skills, but improved confidence and in some cases developed English language skills through this work. GemArts East by North East partnerships continue to offer opportunities, develop skills and bring attention to the enormous talent coming from both the young people and the music practitioners working on East by North East.

GemArts created a special CD and DVD pack to mark the achievements of participants, artists and all partners, presented at a very special presentation event for participants and their families. A copy of the CD DVD can be requested from info@gemarts.org.
 

The East by North East project is kindly funded by