UCan Play is delighted to announce the start of our new project – INTERFACE:RESPONSE. With funding from Innovate UK, and with our partners The Musicians’ Union and NYMAZ, we are going to design, build and run a training and mentoring programme for musicians to help them strengthen their digital skills.

Musicians have been hit hard by Covid-19. It is difficult for them to rehearse together, perform, or undertake other face-to-face activities including teaching. Many of the clubs, pubs, restaurants, arts-centres, concert halls and theatres within which musicians work will be closed for the foreseeable future. It will not be possible to run tours and larger-scale musical events for a long time.

The key aim of INTERFACE:RESPONSE is to quickly create a set of training resources, mentoring opportunities and wider support for individual musicians and their ensembles to enable them to build their digital skills, relocate their core activities online and build new income streams.

The resource will include:

  • A training programme for each key activity (rehearsing, performing, teaching, creating and curating) including case studies, interactive training resources, technical and creative activities and other elements as appropriate.
  • A mentoring programme for all musicians wanting to develop their practice in these core areas.
  • An online forum to help musicians support each other.
  • A dedicated email and telephone line will be established to support musicians in their new activities.

The resource will be made freely available to musicians across the world. The mentoring programme will be available in the UK only.

If you are a musician whose work has been negatively impacted by COVID-19 then please consider filling in our short survey here.

If you would like to contribute to the project in some way please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.