WIRED

Inspiring and educating the next generation of women working with music technology was the aim of YSWN’s WIRED project. To do this, we engaged with children and young people across Yorkshire through outreach workshops, music technology clubs and placement opportunities that would raise their confidence and help them to identify with the music and sound technology profession.

WIRED had three activity strands. The first was a series of outreach workshops offering hands-on music technology experience and raising the profile of different careers in sound. Practical activities included live looping and using Ableton Live. We delivered 48 workshops and online sessions across Yorkshire involving a total of 280 participants, in secondary schools, community youth organisations, libraries and sessions at the National Science & Media Museum in Bradford coinciding with British Science Week.

Secondly, we ran two WIRED music technology clubs for girls and young people of marginalised genders, with 12 weekly sessions delivered over the course of a term. The first club was delivered in partnership with Leeds Beckett University and ran from September – December 2019. Topics covered included using the production software Logic Pro 10, setting up microphones, how recording studios work and potential careers in the music industry. A guest workshop was delivered by sound artist Kelly Jayne Jones and the club culminated with a celebration event for friends and family at which participants performed music they’d created.

The second WIRED club was held in Doncaster from January – March 2020. Sessions took place at The Point and music tech equipment was provided by Doncaster College. Nine face-to-face weekly sessions were held (with a further online session at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown), and activities included using Ableton Live to record and edit, setting up guitar amps and microphones, playing with Stylophones and recording sounds using contact microphones and fruit! A guest DJ-ing workshop was delivered by DJ Angel Lee (Anjali Gopinathan), and participants also visited Doncaster College’s Music Technology campus to use their recording studios.

The final planned strand of project activity involved trainee or work placement opportunities for young women to get paid experience working in the music industry. One participant undertook a five-day placement as trainee sound engineer during Beth Orton’s Brighter Sound residency during the 2019 Sounds Like THIS festival in Leeds. As the Covid-19 pandemic prevented any further placements, we instead organised three short online WIRED courses: Introduction to Sound Recording, Editing with Audacity and Introduction to Sound Design, which ran June – August 2020.