EASTER BREAK 2023
It might have been the school holidays but like a crudely painted Easter Egg going down a hill we kept on rollin’. Our staff were still hard at work providing lots of activities for our young people and families!
On Tuesday 4th April we were down at Victoria Park with our Young People and their families playing rounders, tennis, skating, and generally just having some good fun! The sun threatened to peak through the clouds and everyone very much enjoyed Milo having his campervan available for cooking up some good scran!
We then headed to Drylaw Skatepark for the first GY Skate Jam in collaboration with our new friends at The Edinburgh Wheels Project. They gave free skate lessons – including time with Team Santa Cruz pro skater, and Silverknowes local, Kieran Menzies – gave out free boards and skate-wear to the young people, and we cooked up some more free scran. Both events really showed what you can do with a big speaker and a Gazebo with the community showing up in numbers!
The next night saw our first ever Mixtape Music Club residential out at Pilton Retreat! We made every room a different teaching space for Guitar, Vocals, Drums, Songwriting, and Production and young people had their pick of lessons for three hours. A huge thanks to all of our tutors and special guest drum teacher Nick Hernandez of Scottish legends The Skids and Big Country (ask your Mum and Dad) for giving up their time. After the intense day we of courtse had a campfire jam, a music quiz, and watched Madagascar.
This led us superbly into a week at Mark Morrow Audio where the young people recorded the songs they had worked on. We had over 12 different young people all record original music and the standard within the group continues to rise. Mixtape Vol. 3 is shaping up to be their best collection of songs yet! A number of our young people are playing at this years North Edinburgh Community Festival on Saturday 13th May at West Pilton Park – and rehearsing for this continues to go well!
Our Families together group caught the bad end of the weather the last week of the holidays so hjad to change plans to some bowling and soft play instead, but still had the best of times. We won’t show that Nicole only managed to beat a 3 year old by one point.
A big thank you to our councillors and school staff who still kept up their normal provision during this time! Its been a great break and we’re looking forward to the new term and getting back to our Youth Clubs before Summer!
Team GY x