BBC Radio 3 ‘Music Matters’ Interview

Founder and Creative Director Robin Harris sat down with BBC Radio 3 programme Music Matters last week, along with two participants of Finding Rhythms projects, Edwin and Ross, to discuss making music in prison and the rehabilitative process of our projects.

“When you send a 19 or, 21 year old kid to go and strip wallpaper, he’s going to see that more as punishment than you trying to enable him to grow into the person he wants to be. He probably has skills, talents, things he’s buried from age 12,13, or 14. This is when some of these kids lose their passion for what they’re supposed to do in life. … When it comes to courses like music and vocational things, I think it’s really needed to stop people relapsing and going back into the system. Because when people are stuck there, they don’t have any avenue out or any exit or way to escape their normal life, they’re just going to come back.” Edwin, Finding Rhythms participant.

“The compromise and conflict resolution that will happen within creating a song with a bunch of individuals you don’t know and there is a vast disparity in age, ethnicity, culture. Overcoming those things to come to universal concepts, like isolation in prison, or whether it’s depression, love, hate or conflict. To get to the point where you’ve got the song, that requires a lot of soft skills, whether people know they’re doing it or not” Ross, Finding Rhythms participant.

Listen to the whole interview from 17 minutes onwards here