Music tuition for 70 disadvantaged London children

Dear Friends, 

Our Autumn term has gotten off to a glowing start, with hundreds of young students bringing so much joy at Kimber Road (our original academy venue) and many coming multiple times a week. We are really proud of the beautiful music education and opportunities they are receiving, many made possible because of your fantastic support and donations. Thank you so much.   

We also have a lovely community developing at our stunning venue in Embassy Gardens, with 46 young musicians feeling like World Heart Beat is their home, and many more participating in our First Beats, EMERGE and tech and studio work experience programmes. Our World Heart Beat Embassy Gardens venue, complete with recording studio, practice rooms and cafe, enables our young people to take advantage of the highest music tuition and facilities available whilst being a leading concert venue in the heart of London.  

Our Bursary Songwriting, Guitar, Vocal and Gig Training students are flourishing. If you’d like to show your support and see some of our young piano players, bassists, guitarists, vocalists and drummers in action (led by talented vocalist and guitarist Sian Kelly and guitarist Scipio Mosley) a festive date for your diary is the Gig Band Christmas Concert on Friday 13 December. A week earlier, on Friday 6 December we have our Christmas concert with carol singing, festive music and refreshments – please check out our website for more information. 

This academic year we are delighted to extend our First Beats programme.  Last school year we worked with two local primary schools; this year we are able to work with four. First Beats delivers music learning to young people who live locally in Nine Elms. The children, aged 9-11, come after school to our music academy every week, learn a variety of instruments, and take part in songwriting, recording and music production.They have the opportunity to access a bursary providing weekly music tuition at no charge, for one year. 

Other projects include Planet Harmony, which explores themes of social and climate justice through music. Last year’s project culminated with three in-school workshops involving 70 students and two in-school performances (150+ students and parents in the audience). For the 2024-25 festival we are developing our Sisters Grimm Partnership and are exploring a talk or workshop around environment and performance and a musical re-arrangement workshop led by Ella Spira MBE. 

Trinity Buoy Sounds continues to be our successful East London programme for secondary aged students.  Over the course of the year, we bring professional musicians to work with secondary school students across three schools in Tower Hamlets and Newham boroughs, and at London East Alternative Provision, an education establishment for young people who are excluded from or at risk of exclusion from mainstream education. Our Trinity Buoy Sounds programme includes song writing and performance, tabla tuition and music production teaching. In 2022-23, we provided regular music sessions for 90 young people in 3 schools. In 2023- 24 we achieved this for 185 young people in 5 sites. This year, in 2024 – 25 we hope to reach larger numbers through a partnership working with Tower Hamlets Music and Arts Service (THAMES). 

For older students, our EMERGE programme, which provides industry training and talent development aimed at supporting young people looking to start a career in the music industry, will deliver a one-year music production course. The EMERGE Creative Network will launch in December 2024, creating monthly networking events as the vehicle for industry insight, mentoring and masterclass sessions and providing a platform for creative sharing. 

If you would like to find out more about World Heart Beat, please visit our website, sign up to our eshot, our Memberships Programme (starting from £25/year) or come to any of our year-round concerts - all of which positively impacts the lives of young people living in South London. 

Thank you again for your support, and we wish you a merry run up to Christmas! 

World Heart Beat 

Links:

• World Heart Beat What's On (concert listings)

"Our sincere thanks for all of the effort that the entire World Heart Beat team put into this. The musicians were incredible, and the Ambassador thoroughly enjoyed her visit and opportunity to engage with the students. We’re deeply impressed with the work you’re doing, and look forward to future collaboration” US Cultural Attaché, Pam DeVolder 

World Heart Beat has, as ever, been in full swing with twenty-eight student performances taking place since our last update in March. These range from masterclass performances, community events such as Live at the Bandstand (Summer in Battersea Park), the ‘Happy Streets’ and ‘Wandsworth Arts Fringe’ festivals, the American Ambassador to the UK’s visit to Embassy Gardens, end of term recitals and much, much more. With 352 students registered, and over 55% of them receiving bursaries for free music learning, we’d like to thank you for your support in helping us provide music opportunities to young people from all backgrounds across south London. 

We have recently completed our First Beats programme for the academic year, a project which delivers music to young people who live locally to our Embassy Gardens venue. We continue to work with Griffin Primary School and have also delivered to students from St Mary's School, Battersea. The project is so beautiful! The children, aged 9-11, come after school to our music academy every week, and they learn a variety of instruments, including song-writing, recording and production in the summer term, culminating in two schools' concerts, attended by 76 children.  

We also launched our new Conducting Workshops, led by one of Britain’s foremost woman conductors, Alice Farnham - such an inspiration. So far, we have had our young conductors learn in two taster workshops (one for under 14s, and one for 14-18 years) which were highly successful for the thirty students who took part. For the coming academic year, we are seeking some funding so that we can further develop and integrate conducting opportunities into both our classes and performance events.  

We also intend to engage with more secondary school and sixth form college students through music production sessions, T-Level placements and the EMERGE programme. Our music project, Trinity Buoy Sounds has enabled us to work closely with three secondary schools and two alternative provisions in Tower Hamlets and Newham over the last year, and we have engaged with over 100 students via this programme (this has the potential to develop community-based opportunities for young people from these areas). 

We have continued with our annual Planet Harmony programme with three in-school workshops reaching 70 students, and two in-school performances (150+ students and parents in the audience). We held our songwriters' concert at Embassy Gardens as part of the annual Wandsworth Arts Fringe Festival in June. We also ran a DIY instrument making workshop for children and their families; this is a new way to engage and interest young people in music and sound from a different perspective. 

We have also held three piano and one vocal Masterclasses in the last two terms which have been very positively received, and we are working to deliver more of these in the coming year. We have a drumming masterclass in development and will be hosting music industry talks and 'conversations' for emerging artists working with partners such as PPL and d&b audiotechnik. 

This July, we launched our Summer Jazz Hang programme in partnership with Julian Joseph Jazz Academy where young, soulful and talented jazz musicians can come together to cultivate their artistry, enrich and expand a global community for jazz through performance, education, and friendship. Approximately thirty young people between 16- 25 years have been learning new tunes and repertoires in a relaxed and joyful atmosphere. Jazz royalty, Julian Joseph, Wynton Marsalis and Cleveland Watkiss have very excitedly dropped into the sessions and the future jazz stars from our Summer Jazz hang programme have performed out in the local Wandsworth community at the Happy Streets Festival, as well as the opening acts at two Embassy Gardens concerts, including Brazilian trombonist Joabe Reis’ first ever London performance and as part of the Battersea Jazz Festival for the much-anticipated Celebrating Cannonball Adderley, a concert dedicated to one of the great musicians of jazz history. 

That’s all from us! Thank you, as always, for your much appreciated support.  

World Heart Beat x

Links:

• World Heart Beat's Summer Jazz Hang
• Trinity Buoy Sounds Project update