What is Studio Z?

Studio Z is a music studio based in Z-arts! We are dedicated to developing and nurturing children, young people and early career artists using music as our tool. We are 100% committed to making music education accessible for all young people in Greater Manchester, no matter who they are or where they come from.

The studio exists as a community resource and is embedded within Z-arts, helping us to achieve our wider mission to ‘inspire and enable generations of young people from Greater Manchester and the North West to use creativity to maximise their potential.’ Music education has seen a huge decline in many education systems through lack of funding and the reality is that the poorest children and their communities have the least access to music facilities, resources and education. In addition, the pandemic has massively exacerbated this lack of access. Post-Covid, almost 10% of primary and secondary schools are not teaching class music at all, even though it is a requirement of the curriculum. 68% of primary school and 39% of secondary school teachers stated that music provision is being reduced. (ISM, 2020).

We are committed to tackling these barriers in our local community. We do this by delivering:

• Drop-in sessions for children and young people
• 1-2-1 sessions supporting developing artist
• Industry masterclasses
• School activities
• Community groups
• Supporting children, young people and adults with disabilities
• Collaborations with organisations across England
• Support for 6 diverse new artists via our talent development scheme

We aim to develop all aspects of being a musician:

• Building confidence as a performer
• Music production tutoring
• Music release
• Promotion
• Networking
• Music recording sessions

In addition to our regular sessions we also run various projects in the community. For example:

• GMYN Manchester & Young lives – Working towards recording a rap track about their community and how they could improve it
• DM Lab – Working with disabled musicians and engineers to create accessible instruments and then using them to create new music
• Re(verb) – Manchester Literature Festival – Groups of 16 high school aged young people learning about poetry, lyric writing and creating a song to be performed at Manchester Literature Festival.
• She Creates – A music technology residency for young female artists to introduce them to the world of music production. Our work has been responsible for helping launch the careers of many artists such as IAMDDB, Abnormal Sleepz, Metrodome and more.

Case study

James was an asylum seeker who was selectively mute and had next to no confidence in themselves or their ability. Over the last 3 years they have shown an unbelievable change as a result of attending our music sessions. Not only do they now sing confidently in front of people but we have seen them grow so much socially. They can now work in group settings, unafraid of sharing their ideas with peers.

“Music helps me cope with life if I’m worried, stressed or upset. It blocks everything negative if I have earphones in…most of my friends at school don’t share the same music taste as me and it’s hard to talk about music with them, but here [at Z-arts] I get to share and talk about the music I like.” James, age 14

We are now supporting James to learn the bass and write their own music that they hope to perform at this years Hulme Is Where The Art Is, a local festival hosted by Z-arts.

How you can help?

In the last 4 years we have become a vital lifeline for the young musicians of our community, that is why we are inviting you to offer Studio Z the support it desperately needs. To continue the amazing work that we do we need to raise at least £30k per year.

• £2ksupports our regular sessions with schools and partner organisations.
• £3khelps to cover studio equipment and software maintenance.
• £10k provides over 3000 hours of studio access for young people and the community.
• £15k covers the cost of a specialist music project that develops the skills and builds the aspirations of young people and early career artists from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• £20k covers the studio manager to lead and deliver the Studio Z music projects.

For more information please contact richard@z-arts.org