Free music clips for 13-19 year old teens?

I’m looking for advice to help solve a community information problem. It’s difficult to get hold of short instrumental music clips we need to link useful audio information for an audience of special UK teenagers. The teens live in homes for disabled and looked after children and young people.

Many of the young people have difficulties with reading for one reason or another. So attractive audio information is crucial to help keep them safe, healthy and happy.

We provide them with the audio information on CD and sometimes online.  I edit the music clips in Adobe Audition or Audacity.

We need to find clips that are both free/cheap and legal in copyright terms. Such sites as istockphoto have inexpensive instrumental audio clips for sale but few of the clips are teen-attractive. Teens are a real niche market. Some local bands have kindly offered us free clips but they aren’t really the type of music that the UK teenager community listens to.

What can you suggest? We’ll be very grateful for any usable advice.

Social media training for communities

An earnest consultation at the Huddersfield Social Media Surgery

If you want to get your community group online there is free social media training for you at the Media Centre, Northumberland Street, Huddersfield. Learn about blogging, text messaging, Facebook, Twitter and other free websites on Monday 24th May at 4.30-7pm. Just drop in for advice, there is no need to book.

The fine people who run it are all volunteers called Huddersfield Social Media and you can visit their interesting WordPress blog filled with useful links at:

www.huddersfieldsocial.org.uk

Festival of Flight in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire

A recent event was held at Earlsheaton Technology College to launch the Festival of Flight, involving young people at 15 locations in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Festival of Flight is organised by the Heartstone social enterprise whose mission is ‘challenging racism, prejudice and intolerance.” The highlight was a live phone linkup to two of the living black pioneers of flying in Tuskegee, Alabama. The linkup featured Mildred Carter, the first black woman to gain a pilot’s licence in the southern USA, fighting both gender as well as race prejudice, who went on to become part of the Civil Rights Movement marching alongside Martin Luther King and also Herbert Carter, one of the black Tuskegee Airmen who fought in the Second Word War. They linked up in several conversations with the Rt. Hon. Shahid Malik,  Under Secretary of State for Communities and MP for Dewsbury and several young people including Ambassadors of Flight, young people with a special role in promoting the Festival of Flight nation-wide.

The Festival of Flight involves an    exhibition whose main purpose is to provide a vehicle to bring together groups who would otherwise not meet from different backgrounds, nationalities, races and cultures. Our photo here shows Councillor Masood Ahmed, Chair of the Dewsbury Area Committee, with young people and airmen from the modern UK Armed Forces at Earlsheaton Technology College.

Safeguarding Children in madressahs and supplementary schools

New publication for madressahs and supplementary schools in the UK

The full-colour guide Safeguarding Children – Guidance for madressahs and supplementary schools is unique in covering the requirements of the many supplementary schools in the UK, as well as the needs of madressahs. It is based on the latest legislation to safeguard children and young people. The editor is Shakeel Hafez, Supplementary Schools Co-ordinator with Kirklees Council’s Children and Young People Service. I recently attended the launch of the 2010 edition at the Al-Hikmah Centre in Batley, West Yorkshire. Shakeel is a colleague of mine who I have known since 2003 when I collected the Community Care magazine’s annual award for the predecessor of the Safeguarding Children guide.

Buy it on-line from:

Safeguarding Children – Guidance for madressahs and supplementary schools

Shakeel also has a new blog of great interest to the Muslim community in Batley, West Yorkshire.

Welcome to Signs of Communities!

Signs of Communities is a web log of the work of the author and other people who work on behalf of the communities in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. Work to celebrate and increase the cohesion of our rich variety of communities.

This blog also makes occasional virtual trips to South-east Asia – for reasons of personal community heritage which are outlined in About Me.