Performing arts group Clod Ensemble and The Crib youth centre, both based in de Beauvoir, are asking local residents to audition for a community-based music project called Hackney Rooms. With electronic musician Electric Farmer, they hope to produce a project that inspires participants as well as listeners and helps to rebuild the local community after the pandemic.
Aimed at people under the age of 30, the project will involve a group of artists selected by producers based on clips of their own work that they send in during this month.
The group, of around eight artists, will work together over April and May on various sound-based pieces, which could include songs, spoken word and even conversations. Producers and organisers will be around to help spark ideas and to provide a training program at the start.
Each of the pieces will be based around the experiences of lockdown. Residents taking part in the Hackney Rooms project will be asked to take inspiration from the rooms they have been confined to over the past year, flats study spaces and bedrooms.
Contributions will be put together by Electric Farmer (Elisha Millard) and turned into an EP, which will then be made available online.
Frank Sweeney, volunteer and trustee of The Crib, and one of the producers of the project, said: “The idea is to recognise young people’s creative professionalism,” and as such contributors will be offered a salary.
“We are looking to provide an opportunity for young creatives to explore this weird environment that we are in with regards to Covid-19 and lockdown.
“When people have been locked in small rooms for a year, we hope to inspire people to broaden their perception of what the ‘room’ is and to explore that.”
