Rise is a social action project, we use music to engage young people in exploring their ideas and experiences of loneliness, isolation and moving to high school. We then challenge them to think how they can use these experiences to help others. Make Some Noise worked across several schools in the Stoke On Trent area both primary and secondary. In the primary schools we used the resources created in year one of the project in combination with facilitated music sessions to help participants explore their attitudes toward moving school, express their fears and hopes about this and explore the value of friendship and connection by writing a song as a class.
At St Peter’s academy we worked with a group of especially vulnerable students in the year 7 nature group and helped them develop new skills and explore their attitudes to friendship and connection. At the Coop Academy we worked with year 7 and year 10 groups and the coop young leaders to explore all of the above and to help design a set of resources that could be used with year 6 pupils to communicate ideas around the aims of the project and to encourage them to support each other and to seek support if they need it.