About Charlie Kew (Space)

Below is everything you might want to know about my lessons, workshops, music and background. For a list of my other portfolio projects, click here.

promoting and supporting music making for the sake of social impact and wellbeing.

Community Loops began by offering one-off workshops and events, focused on inclusion, accessiblity and engagement. These included sound walks, deep listening workshops, experimental music workshops, provided in collaboration with communities and charities.

Our Past Projects

Our Success.

Before we knew it, this concept of - getting people into a 0 expectations, music making environment - snowballed into a collective of musicians and sound artists. We ran several different projects across Brighton and Hove and elsewhere, for several organisations. Without ever incorporating as an organisation, we were able to raise over £10,000 from charities and organisations, as well as thousands more in-kind support, to deliver experimental music making projects across Brighton and Hove. Our projects were diverse and community focused, as detailed here.

(pictured left to right: Kai Swarvett, Jack Cleary, Rosie Robinson, Charlie Kew)
“We wanted to create a very simple, but genuine approach to engaging people in music making. Not so they could ‘be a musician’, but so we could exchange ideas about what makes a meaningful, music experience”

Our Philosophy.

The philosophy of Community Loops is that ‘amateur’, ‘casual’, or ‘just-for-fun’ music making, is a fundamental aspect of a healthy society.

We learnt many valuable things from our workshops. Most significantly, that the power of music to enhance the connections and relations of individuals within a shared network, is incredibly accessible. While music as an industry can be highly competitive, elitist, misrepresentative and exclusive, music as an experience will always be beyond any individual or groups direct control. Because music is a human experience, no-one is excluded from the value it brings. It doesn’t have to be ‘good’, ‘professional’, or in the process of becoming something bigger and better than it is. It can be immature, undeveloped and completely unintentional, yet immensely valuable and consequential.

Regardless of how the music industry has, does and will shape our relationship to music, the value of the music experience begins within. This ‘source’ if you like, cannot be removed and no matter how shrouded in distraction, cannot be extinguished.

Therefore in our eyes, a healthy society, is one where everyone gets value from the music that’s right infront of them.

Our Origins.

At first Community Loops was a 1 off project funded by Vinspired. With the aim of providing a small series of voluntary run workshops to young people in Brighton. Our approach was to facilitate a creative space, that didn’t limit us to any particular kind of music. We chose to work with synthesis and electronic instruments, as they offered us more creative flexibility. Nobody involved had a preconceived idea of what music we were making. It was very much about the process, people and places of the music. An excuse for being completely intuitive, immersed, in the moment. Not just with music, but through music.

The End…

As we began to exhaust the number of funding opportunities available to our level of operations, we took a step back. We began to look at the potential of our activities as an organisation. After some years of studying and experimenting with business planning, we came to the conclusion that too formal an operation would seperate us from the grass-roots activities we were striving to create. So, instead of creating music opportunities ourselves, we often seek out, support and represent others. Those who provide music experiences not-for-profit, but for engaging their community.

With special thanks to the following for supporting our projects:

Original Music

I have been writing music since I started practicing piano but took a long time to settle on a particular style. Since 2021 I decided to establish an alias as an electronic music performer, with heavy influences from Video Game Music.

Debut Album Dec 30th 2022

Tweaker is a dream-like montage of various electronic music genre, from video game style, 4 on the floor, down-tempo hip hop, ambience, noise and glitch, among others. Independently produced, each track is a new atmospheric world, made almost entirely from keyboards and FX, peppered with field recordings, real world samples and lots of resampling’s of both.

Tweaker Definition: 1. An addict ‘tweaking’ in withdrawal. 2. A perfectionist, always ‘tweaking’ their project.

When does passion end and obsession begin? What’s the difference between dedicated and dependent? Tweaker is also a journey through sounds and ideas generated from 7 years of learning electronic music production, dating back to my very first experiments with electronica. It journals my progress with and relationship to creating music. My ‘letting go’ of perfectionism and an obsessive need to endlessly ‘tweak’ my creations.

(click the image to listen - original artwork by charliekewspace)

Debut Single Aug 13th 2022

Billions of light years away in unknown, uncharted realms, beings of incomprehensible magnitude surf the macrocosm by titanic, multidimensional, muscular undulations. As they digest quantum particles of dark matter, they convert this energy into vibrations that reach across many galaxies. Their “song” has been accessed via the quantum field and is translated into audio here, for your listening pleasure (click the image to listen - original artwork by charliekewspace).

My Background

The following describes my entry into music, my music interests and experiences, both professional and ameatuer. Some of these projects are also detailed further down in the Previous Projects section, which is a portfolio of discontinued ideas and works.

I was deeply fascinated by music by my early teens and began learning independently on a humble keyboard, for a year or so before taking lessons. My teacher studied Jazz but together we mostly studied Classical music, with lots of inspiration and diverse listening references being provided along the way (shout out to Matthew Jukes).

I began working as a musician during my later teens, performing with a local theatre group, playing background music in restaurants and in a function band gigging around East Sussex. I performed in many pubs and local theatres and the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill. Although it was very interesting to obtain this kind of work at a young age, it was not me. I studied music at school and college and my heart was in studying and composing at the time.

I studied music for 4 years at Goldsmiths University, graduating in 2015. My interests transitioned from contemporary composition, where I was writing scores for ensembles, experimental choirs and writing academic studies on vocal music and beatboxing, into experimental electronica. During uni time I would write academia on vocal music and beatboxing, while learning how to make beats, record and produce music with friends in my spare time. I spent many enjoyable late nights listening to endless varieties of music, writing, producing and experimenting with my peers.

During university I was also performing Classical recitals on piano and I developed RSI (repetitive strain injury). The condition was so bad that at times it was difficult to turn a door handle, or pick up a kettle without getting electric shocks of pain down my shoulders, arms and fingers. This was due to a combination of excessive, forceful playing, typing and general bad posture and stress. Despite getting a respectable grade in my performances and overall degree, my piano skills plummeted, in some sense taking me back by about 5 years worth of practice.

Without my piano skills, I began studying music production, audio engineering and field recording with more focus. While maintaining improvisation and group playing with the piano. In this time I produced an album (released in 2022). I also began to teach and run music workshops. Based on my experience with RSI I turned my passions towards music meditation, deep listening and community music. I became determined to teach people to have a good relationship with their instrument and how to avoid the problems I encountered.

After university I ran several workshops and coordinated my peers to do the same. I set up a not-for-profit called Community Loops and raised over £10,000 independently for music workshops. We worked with homeless adults, children and families, in youth clubs, festivals and elsewhere. The project won awards and was developed into a business plan focussing on well-being in the workplace. This became very complicated and now the spirit of this project is continued in film production by Rosie Robinson.

I have often, since being a teenager myself, worked with children and young people, in schools, colleges and outside of education. This includes students with neurodiverse conditions such as ADHD and Autism, physical and learning disabilities. I’ve also often worked as a manager at events, bars and restaurants, as I generally enjoy opportunities to lead and support teams.

My intentions moving forward are to raise the bar of private music education, offering an exceptional service as a teacher. To also provide workshops in new and innovative places, in support of well-being, team building and general good times. I’m also developing an outstanding live performance that encompasses my music experiences and influences to date.