CAN’s Music Leader, Emma Marsh, ran a one-and-a-half-hour workshop featuring Samba rhythms, percussion, and Afro-Cuban songs for 20 students aged 18 – 24.
The workshop was informed by her significant experience in community practice, including her work with our CAN Young Artists’ programme for children and young people. Emma used her expertise working with refugees and asylum seekers, especially young people, to advocate for the participatory sector’s work and outline best practice.
Emma led CAN’s workshop focused on how the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector could use arts workshops to support health, well-being, and mental well-being and work with marginalised communities, including refugees and asylum seekers.
The workshop focused on how the voluntary sector could best partner with creative organisations and develop innovative programmes with creative practitioners to achieve better outcomes for its diverse client groups. In turn, it helped students understand how their practice could benefit the sector, and the employment opportunities open to them.
In addition to a lively hands-on workshop, Emma shared career progression advice for students who wanted to work in the participatory arts sector.
Emma said:
“The workshop at MMU was a wonderful opportunity to share some of my experiences and values as a community artist, and to encourage the students to get involved with similar work. It’s important as creatives that we share our light with people; the creative arts can be transformative to lives and communities. As well as my love for the music, seeing those transformations in real time through art, drives me to continue and develop as a community artist as it’s such a rewarding part of my work. I think it’s also important to do this type of work, as each artist and practitioner will bring something different to the sector- no artist is the same, so each gift given to participants would be unique. The students at MMU were really open, fed back some really conscious notes of how they could apply their qualities in the community arts and creative health sector.”
The students gave very positive feedback to the workshop.
“The workshop gave me a new perspective.”
“The experience made me feel joyful, vulnerable and free!”
“I loved playing with the sticks and harmonizing.”
