Voltage
Background
Voltage is Youth Music’s national music volunteering programme for young people, aged 16-25. Funded by v, the youth volunteering charity, the 3 year £300,000 programme aims to provide more than 300 young people with structured volunteering opportunities. Voltage gives volunteers the chance to act as ambassadors for music, make a positive difference to their local community and gain rewards and accreditation for their contributions to the programme.
Music is high on the list of young people’s passions and we believe that offering young people the chance to volunteer in a music setting will be attractive and beneficial to all involved.
Volunteering is…
‘an activity that involves spending time, unpaid, doing something that aims to benefit the environment or individuals or groups other than (or in addition to) close relatives’ (The Volunteering Compact Code of Good Practice 2005)
Introduction
Voltage aims to provide high quality, structured volunteering opportunities on a short term and part time basis to enable young people to become involved in shaping music provision in their local area, and have a positive impact on their communities.
Each delivery partner supports 10 young people (short-term volunteers) per year to take part in taster volunteering opportunities designed to reach young people who wouldn’t normally have the chance or the support to volunteer. They also have 6 part-time volunteers, volunteering for a period of between 6 months and 1 year aged between 16 and 25 who are spokespeople for music and will aim to encourage greater participation in music-making. These 6 volunteers include:
- Four Young Ambassadors for Music: taking part in a range of volunteering activities, linked to an existing music project, and
- Two Associate Young Ambassadors: acting as peer mentors to the Young Ambassadors and supported by an adult within the delivery partner.
All volunteers take part in national celebration events as well as receive local training and support. They also work towards gaining a Youth Achievement Award as well as the ‘V’ awards based on the number of hours they volunteer.
The programme seeks to;
- Increase the number of young people who wouldn’t normally volunteer involved in structured volunteering opportunities linked to music
- Increase the visible pathways for young people into education, employment or training
- Encourage community participation in music-making activity
- Ensure Young people more involved in contributing to the development of music education across the formal and non-formal sectors, locally, regionally and nationally
- Increase opportunities for young people to be actively involved in supporting government agendas linked to young people and the arts
- Increase awareness of the benefits of volunteering, particularly among arts organisations and the community
Voltage is currently being implemented by selected delivery partners including Youth Music Action Zones and community arts organisations with the number of regions covered by the programme expanding to reach 9 in total.
Voltage delivery partners
Wirral Youth Theatre - Liverpool
Soundlincs - Lincolnshire
Streetvibes Youth - London
New Roots - West Midlands
Music4U – Humber
CYMAZ- South West
The Sage Gateshead – North East
Visit the v website: www.vinspired.com/
Voltage 2008-2009
- 148 volunteers have participated in Voltage as of April 2009.
- Voltage has achieved REACH- The quality practice framework for Youth Action Agencies. For more information on this go thttp://www.youthactionnetwork.org.uk/
- Workshops in the community led by Voltage Volunteers have introduced young people to volunteering and music making activity for the first time. Young people have also been encouraged to help out at events created by Voltage volunteers. Volunteers have addressed key community issues throughout the Voltage programme and created events and campaigns to address these issues. For example tackling gun and Knife crime through the ‘Rhyme Against Crime’ open mic event in youth music week. This involved a large number of young people from a community where knife crime is a serious problem.
- Voltage volunteers were captured on the Community channel during Youth Music week - watch the video
- Over 60% of activities designed by Voltage volunteers support government agendas. For example working with the MET police to tackle gun crime, working with vulnerable young people in the community, developing events and workshops on hate crime initiatives and collaborating with community regeneration officers.
- All programme activity supports the Every Child Matters Outcomes and the Government’s Children’s plan.
- All volunteers have been engaged in some kind of accreditation/ training or development activity for example V50 Awards, Art Awards, V Awards and other form of training that match their individual aspirations, for example public speaking and sound engineering.
- Voltage volunteers designed and took part in a national celebration event name ‘Extreme Voltage’ to celebrate their achievements and induct new volunteers to the programme (see below for more details and to watch the event film and radio show made by CYMAZ volunteers).
Impact on Volunteers
- ‘Things like Voltage are really important to young people because it gives young people a platform to do anything we want, for example, the money to run the event, which gives young people freedom to express themselves and to give back to the community and become role models. Anyone who wants to develop themselves would find Voltage very attractive.’ Voltage Volunteer
- “To be able to educate people and help them learn the skills that I’m learning myself at the moment; to get them off of the streets, not in a boring way, but in a creative way, by actually doing something to engage them on the streets.” Voltage Volunteer
- ‘Voltage has given me chance to improve my organization and communication skills and experience in how to get young people’s attention and make things marketable. It’s also been experience of working as a team and working with people from different backgrounds, it’s just been a way of having a better range of experience.’ Voltage Volunteer
- ‘I joined Voltage to be able to educate people and help them learn the skills that I’m learning myself at the moment; to get them off of the streets, not in a boring way, but in a creative way, by actually doing something to engage them on the streets. The main thing is that I want to get people enjoying music as much as I do, helping them to gain confidence and develop a goal, something to work towards.’ Voltage Volunteer
- It’s opened up the horizon of work to fall back on; from wanting to only be a singer I can see that I could also be a vocal coach or definitely a workshop leader.” Voltage Volunteer
Extreme Voltage Celebration Event 23rd July, 2009 - Youth Music celebrates the first year successes of its Voltage volunteers:
EXTREME Voltage was designed by Voltage volunteers to showcase their work and achievements during the first year of the programme. Volunteers showcased their talent through a music and media showcase and inducted the next round of volunteers through interactive workshops. They also designed the invitation chose the food, location and were also involved in the filming, photography, setting up technical equipment, lighting and sound during the event.
‘This event brought everyone together to be able to celebrate what had been happening in their areas over the past 12 months, this was not only an opportunity to perform but see how far voltage has come overall. This was all helped along by compare and MC Tony Fitzgerald (Voltage Volunteer). There was a wide range of performances from talented, interesting and cool performers who really set the event of… the atmosphere was fantastic. It shows that voltage has not only made an impact on younger peers it has taught everyone to come together and work as one. It was cooler than a polar bears toe nails!’ Voltage Volunteer at Wirral Youth Theatre
Watch the Video from the Extreme Voltage Celebration Event below
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