Life support

Youth Music Mentors aims to improve the life chances of young people through music-based mentoring. Led by Youth Music, the scheme offers additional support to make a positive impact on young peoples’ behaviour and interaction with their community, with guidance from a trained mentor. The scheme uses music as common ground to develop a relationship and trust between the mentor and mentee, to enable the young person to making changes to their knowledge, behaviour and attitudes. The partners involved have track records of engaging with young people in challenging circumstances, often in collaboration with referral agencies such as the criminal justice service. They identify existing or new participants who would benefit from additional support in a creative environment.

The programme supports the personal and musical development of young people, enabling them to progress into peer mentoring roles and achieve accreditation, such as the Arts Award. It also provides development for adult mentors and the delivery organisations, so that mentoring can become embedded in their existing music provision. This has had a demonstrable effect on the participants: between 2006 and 2008 over 1,000 young people received one-to-one, small and large group mentoring in 14 areas of England. The key achievements for this period¹ were: almost all participants said that they respected and felt respected by the other party in the mentoring relationship; 80% of mentors and mentees agreed or strongly agreed that the programme gave them opportunities they would not have been able to access elsewhere; 88% of mentees said that their enjoyment of music had increased, whether they were previously engaged with music making or not; 73% of mentees, 83% of adult mentors and 85% of peer mentors felt that they had developed skills which would be useful outside music.
Many of the young people obtained skills beyond the parameters of their improved musical ability, learning to listen and follow instructions, to present in front of their peers with confidence, and to read and write to a much higher standard. Other skills included increased creativity, punctuality, greater respect for others, co-operation, leadership, teamwork and networking. Perhaps most significantly, 62% of mentees with highly challenging behaviour said that their behaviour had improved. One mentor said, “Youth Music Mentors arrived just in time for Danny… I put Danny’s subsequent transformation down to the programme, as Danny had been on projects previously, without making genuine progress towards fulfilling his potential.” Another mentor said of Danny, “Before this programme, I would have been setting him up for a fall by saying he could make it as a community musician, but now it is a realistic ambition.” Danny is now living back with his family and has had a taste of full-time employment: “My parents saw I was doing something positive and gave me a second chance. The programme also stops you from being shy in front of other people and gives you a bit of ‘get up and go’...so you go for an interview and you get a job!”
Youth Music will continue to work with partners to provide one-to-one support for young people aged 11–25 in up to 19 areas of England by 2011. A national package of training is in development, and it is the intention to produce advice, guidance and resources for organisations wanting to build music mentoring into their work.