We recently awarded funding to Bubble Club CIC. They are London based, and their mission is to provide people with learning disabilities with access to social and cultural experiences.
Our grant was used to launch a new DJ program supporting Bubble Club DJs to develop professionally and for new DJs to learn skills. Bubble Club’s DJ Tutor delivered the program of workshops, support sessions and live DJ sets. This was supported by the Bubble Club Project Manager. It was a brand new project and some trial and error was needed in their approach, working with service users in new ways, new service users, new clients and new locations, which all took a lot of organising and adapting to get right. Over all the project was a massive success with great prospects for the future.
Bubble Club was running the beginner workshops at their venue on Brick Lane, in conjunction with the arts and crafts sessions that run there on Fridays. At the same time they also hosted a series of meetings with Bubble Club DJs to bring them together and to develop collective spirit and to identify goals and barriers for the group professionally. Goals and ideas included online profiles, radio sessions and mainstream gigs. As part of this, they researched and shortlisted local venues which they then contacted. From that they established two partnerships which have elevated the program immensely.
RESIDENCY AT CRATE BREWERY – Beginner DJ workshops are now hosted at this bar/venue, during the day while it is quiet. In the evenings every other week, Bubble Club DJs have a residency to perform DJ sets, 6-10pm. (8 DJ sets so far) This residency is exactly the kind of opportunity that they had intended for this program to create for their DJs - paid gigs at a mainstream location. They reported that a residency like this is also a great platform and example of what they can do to then find more residencies with other venues. A lot of coordination and meetings were needed between them and the venue to make it achievable on both sides.
BRIXTON RADIO was the second partnership created. They are a small but established radio station based in Brixton working with many popular DJs and also have a community arm to their programme. This is a fantastic experience and exposure for the DJs. They are slowly forming a collective and developing between themselves.