Two young musicians have completed the More Music Mentorship Scheme, which has provided them with valuable experience and new skills to start to build careers as music leaders and freelance arts practitioners. Colette Webb and Jack Boynton became mentees in November 2023 and completed the scheme in July 2024.

Colette is a classically trained singer and graduated with a degree in community music from York St John University in 2023.

Prior to staring the mentorship, Jack had been a More Music participant and valued volunteer. He is now a gig promoter and a gigging musician. Since the mentorship, he has been working on our Seagull Café project for people over 60.

This is the fourth year of the More Music Mentorship, funded by Youth Music, which has now supported eight mentees. It provides a structured programme of shadowing, mentoring and training over an 8 to 9-month period. This offers mentees an overview of our diverse in-house programme and provides a hand-on insight into community music practice and life as a freelance music leader.

Colette and Jack were each supported by members of our core music leader team, who identified their particular interests and skills and arranged a timetable for shadowing sessions across our weekly programme and provided pastoral and professional support throughout. The wide-ranging learning opportunities included music making activities for early years, SEND, young people and adults, exploring many different musical genres and styles of delivery.

A bursary is provided to help reduce any financial barrier to participation and contribute to any costs incurred. They were mentored by music leaders Rachel Parsons and Ash Murphy.

Ash and Rachel interviewed our mentees to find out about their mentorship experience.

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Q: What has the mentorship experience been like for you? Has it been what you expected?

Colette: It’s been really fulfilling and quite amazing in developing my own skills.  It has been what I expected but it’s also been more than what I expected too, in terms of getting to shadow lots of different groups and finding my niche, so to speak, in early years through that.

Jack: It’s been support from mentors to help me grow and develop in regards to running workshops, working with participants and as a musician.  It’s more like personal development than rather than training which has been really amazing.

Q: Do you think having the opportunity to observe and participate in a variety of sessions was helpful to you, and if so, in what ways?

Colette: I think it was really helpful for me to observe the different facilitation styles of music leaders and how to pitch it to different groups.  For example, it helped me to develop my own facilitation skills and know how to run a session for early years by observing Anni Tracy and Ben McCabe (who deliver More Music’s early years work) because I had no experience of this beforehand.

Jack: Initially I started to go to groups to explore different areas of music.  Through this, I ended up working with different demographics and I found that I was rather adept at working with groups of people that I hadn’t assumed I would be.  Initially, I was apprehensive to work in SEND music settings out of fear that I might embarrass myself or slip up, but I feel that I have grown in confidence by becoming able to talk to different groups and treating everyone the same.

Q: What new skills do you think you have learned as a result of the mentorship, what have you gained?

Colette: Leadership skills. At the start of the mentorship, I didn’t know what sort of direction I was going in.  This has given me the confidence to start my own business and go for different projects and put myself out there.  Also, it has helped with planning and adapting in a session if it doesn’t go so well, that’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t because it helps you to develop the session to make it even better next time.

Jack: I’ve become much more personable, which is what I set out to do.  My musicianship has skyrocketed even if that wasn’t the intention, being exposed to all this constant workshopping had made me better at singing and guitar.

Q: Has there been a particular highlight of your mentorship experience

Colette: My highlight was taking part in the Magic Islands early years performances, which run over two days with Anni Tracy, Ben McCabe and Anna, Daly. It was interesting experiencing that session, finding out how intensive interaction and sensory experience can spark a child’s interest in instruments.  It doesn’t have to be a person saying ‘go and play this’, they just get to explore it themselves and then that sparked my own idea for my own session that I ran later on. I piloted a sensory ‘walk in the woods’, based on Magic Islands, but it was more getting the kids to experience what it would be like to walk through the woods so cutting out leaves, making leaves make a crunch sound, swaying like trees so engaging all of their senses, smelling the flowers, things like that and also incorporating music into that as well.

Jack: Towards the final weeks of the Stages programme, I found groups approaching me for help and to my surprise, it had turned out that I had become someone in their eyes who was dependable and capable, and that was a great boost to my confidence. I was able to help them some groups develop and play music outside More Music, which added an overarching fulfilment to this.

Q: What do you think got you to that point?

Jack: I think it was the fact we were working under pressure, we had a very short amount of time, a 40 minute rehearsal time to sort of get results and I think I adopted a no nonsense kind of attitude which I was worried made me seem a bit serious at times but it seems to have paid some sort of dividends!

Q: What are the next steps for you after the mentorship?

Colette: There is quite a lot. Through the mentorship, I have been able to network and got loads of other opportunities such as building my singing business, tutoring, starting a ‘healing harmonies for wellbeing’ singing group at the Gregson in early September and continuing my teaching.  I did a singing for lung health course so I am starting a singing for health group at Stanley’s Community Centre in Morecambe which I am in the process of doing at the moment. I am also going to try to go for funding for the early years workshop that I did and piloted and also looking into an early years course later on down the line.

Jack: I want to keep on developing my musical and technical abilities so I can deliver one-to-one tuition.  I want to keep putting gigs on as a stepping stone for emerging musicians and I want to keep running workshops.

Q: If you could sum up the mentorship in three words, what would they be?

Colette: Transformative, enjoyable, joyful

Jack: Supportive, wholesome and chill

Q: What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into this industry or take up a mentorship?

Jack: I’ve found that this experience has made me more confident and capable.  The reality is hitting that this is a really difficult industry.  There is support and there are folks out there but I think you need to think very carefully about how you are going to launch yourself into this.  The biggest thing I’ve found is to have peers I can talk to and that is what is on offer here and other places as well.

Colette: Building that support network especially if you want to go into this industry is really important because it can be quite lonely sometimes.  To someone who is thinking about doing the mentorship, I’d say go for it, absolutely take the opportunity because although this industry is quite hard to get into, this mentorship offers so many opportunities and you get to grow your skills professionally and personally.