With the World Cup in Brazil coming up this summer, there is no better time to combine football and music together in one community event. Thus, on the weekend of the big final in July, we will host an Our Big Gig event in South London bringing together members of Football Beyond Borders, young people from our mentoring projects and members of the local community to celebrate in style.
Football Beyond Border’s ‘Our Big Gig’ event in South London will showcase a diverse range of music, from Hip-Hop to World Music. We will also run a variety of football-based activities and host a 5-a-side tournament made up of community teams. Alongside this programme, we will bring together young people from our mentoring projects in interactive music workshops, facilitating the creation of a collaborative mix-tape. This mix-tape will then be used to promote a football tour that the participants are keen to undertake to explore and understand the legacy of the World Cup in Brazil in September 2014.
What we'll deliver:
- Create a collaborative mixtape featuring music from the day's events
- Deliver an Our Big Gig event in South London
- Host a 5-a-side tournament to run alongside the day's musical activities, inviting local community teams to participate
- Host an open mic session to give members of the local community a chance to showcase their talent
- Set up a stage for up to 4 hours of live music performances from young musicians
- Set up stalls for local shops and businesses to sell food/drinks & promote their work
- Create a short film about the day's events - with young people involved in the filming and editing process
- Run a variety of football workshops for all ages
- Run creative writing workshops to inspire young people to take up spoken word and poetry
- Run music workshops including DJing & a wide range of instruments
- Run sessions for younger children where they can discover different instruments and types of music
Why it's a great idea:
We at Football Beyond Borders believe in the power of football to inspire young people to achieve their goals and make their voices heard. Our work has shown us that football is an immensely powerful tool for bringing people together and creating strong communities, for fighting prejudice, inequality and discrimination, and for creating opportunities for young people. Our primary focus is now on working with young people in some of London's most deprived communities. We run weekly football and mentoring sessions to empower them to find work, get into higher education and campaign on issues which are important to them.
Much like football, music is yet another powerful cultural medium that transcends social and cultural borders and allows people to connect with each other in creative and enjoyable ways. We believe that a combination of these two mediums provides an open and inclusive platform for staging a community event, and so we are extremely excited about Our Big Gig.
Steps to get it done:
- We will coordinate with local youth & community organisations to ensure community support and participation
- We will use our powerful social media channels to publicise the event & attract the right participants
- We will partner up with local musicians to ensure we deliver high-quality music workshops
- We will set up an organising committee made up of FBB volunteers & participants from our youth projects
