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 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.
With special thanks to the following for supporting our projects:
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 and support and represent others. Those who provide music experiences not-for-profit, but for engaging their community.
