It is a Youth Music initiative devised and delivered by the Society for the Promotion of New Music (spnm). Led and inspired by leading UK composers and musicians, it takes place in locations across the UK and enables young people to create and notate music in a variety of styles.

The projects, developed with spnm by composer Alasdair Nicolson, focus on areas of social exclusion where there is limited access for young people to make music. Sound Inventors was awarded the winner of the 2003 Royal Philharmonic Society's prestigious Music Award for Education.

Sound Inventors 2: 2004/05
Following on from the success of the programme in 2002/03, Sound Inventors will provide a broader range or activity and experience for young composers aged between 12 and 18, offering three levels of workshops based on ability. Future provision will be split into two types of projects:

Residential camps
Sound Inventors will run two residential camps serving first timers to composition, as well as more experienced young composers. The residential weeks will give participants the opportunity not only to develop composition skills, but to take part in a range of other activities with their contemporaries. The first camp will take place in the North of England in Summer 2004 and the second camp in Southern England in Summer 2005.

Non-residential camps
Non-residential projects will take place in Bedfordshire, Cornwall, Newcastle, Norwich, Shropshire, Wigan and Sheffield. Sound Inventors will also take projects into Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

Other composers who support Sound Inventors include: Steve Martland, Errollyn Wallen, Barrington Pheloung, Django Bates, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Graham Fitkin, Tunde Jegede, Deidre Gribbin, Michael Nyman, Diana Burrell, Alec Roth and Debbie Wiseman.

Sound Inventors also provides help, advice and resources to those teaching and encouraging young composers. At the heart of each project is an intensive, five session period of composition during which time the young participants work with professional musicians and composers towards writing their own new piece of music. After this point the project teams revisit works in progress through composition surgeries and on hand advice. New work created through Sound Inventors is performed in a series of public showcases.

For more information contact:

Sound Inventors
C/o spmn
18-20 Southwark St
London
SE1 1TJ

T: 020 7357 7993
E: soundinventors@spnm.org.uk
W: www.soundinventors.org.uk