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The project

The project


"Its not often that well meaning community projects produce genuinely compelling results, but Urban Collective is a noble exception" IDJ Magazine

British Urban Collective is a FREE nationwide youth music project that empowers Collectives of young people to write, record and promote their own albums for independent release under expert guidance.

Over the past four years the project has been running in the capital as London Urban Collective, where more than 200 young artists have collaborated to produce several albums, a feature film, documentaries, music videos and dozens of live shows: www.londonurbancollective.com

Now British Urban Collective is launching nationwide starting in 5 UK cities this year:

  • Glasgow
  • Manchester
  • Hull
  • Belfast
  • London

Here's how it works:

  • Collective's in each city will be chosen from open auditons. We are looking for solo artists, bands, rappers, mcs, crews, producers, managers and aspiring session players. Anyone aged 16-25 yrs can audition in any genre of music.
  • The project team will select 30 people and they will they begin a week of training in all aspects of the music business from vocal, to song writing to performance as well as business angles such as campaign management, live promotion and digital music marketing.
  • If they pass through the training week the Collective are then empowered to write, record and promote their own album in a major recording studio under the expert guidance of Freeport Records and the Urban Collective team.
  • When all five cities have completed the project a panel of music industry execs will select the best three (3) tracks from each city for inclusion in a CD release and major London showcase infront of major labels.
  • All the other tracks recorded will receive a global digital release through Freeport / Universal Music - so noone really misses out! Each artist / group will also get an updateable profile on this website for their tunes, links, biogs and photos.
  • British Urban Collective will also build a start-up recording studio in each city and train up several of the Collective's aspiring producers so they can operate their own studio
  • The Collective will finally create their own live event steering group and manage a start-up budget for live gigs and promotion within their area, in partnership with national independent promoterCurious Generation.

Harry Leckstein, founder of Urban Collective, said:

"In the past four years the Urban Collective project has helped more than two hundred young people across London and now that we have the chance to work across the UK I'm very excited to see who's out there determined to become the new pioneers ".