Mintel is delighted to work with CM Sounds as one of our corporate charity partners. In this guest post, Sam Johnson from CM Sounds explains the work that they do.
CM (Community Music) is a registered charity – we’ve been working for the last 32 years to provide predominantly free access music education to people from all backgrounds with a focus on 13 – 19 year olds who are classified as NEET (not in education, employment or training), people with learning and or physical disabilities as well as those whose social, economic and sometimes even religious backgrounds have precluded them from accessing creative education opportunities.
The work we do comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes from early years instrument lessons all the way through to one of the very few foundation degrees in the UK that can be accessed by people with no formal qualifications. This gives us a depth of programming that enables students to start with us as an 8 year old and stay all the way through to higher education.
Although we’re passionate about helping people access their own creativity and music making we see profound daily examples of how working creatively can help people develop all those core skills so needed to not only gain employment but contribute to a decent society – team work, communication, self expression, ability to deal with compromise, tolerance… the list is endless! So we’ve had success stories with ex students as diverse as Courtney Pine through to Britney Spears’ current producer but also equally incredible examples of kids who started with us as ex offenders, who are now holding a full BA Hons and working in publishing!
We love to encourage our students to perform and at the end of every term we hold a big Music Space Live event. There was a wonderful turnout of Mintel staff at our December show and it’s great to see our partners at these events – it’s a chance to see the huge variety of people we work with and hear the music they’ve been working on. It’s also the event most closely tied with the Music Space programme and it’s this particular aspect of our work that Mintel have been so kindly supporting. Music Space is a unique project, which offers one to one support, rehearsal 
space, recording time and gigging opportunities to the young music makers of Tower Hamlets.
To find out more about CM Sounds and how you can contribute to the valuable work that they do, click here. We’ll be posting ongoing updates from Sam and the team at CM sounds as the year progresses.
