The bottom line: From Jedward to social entrepreneur

Blastbeat has secured funding of over £350,000 from the Department of Children, Schools and Families (City Challenge Dept) to unearth the next generation of business and music talent.

My search will cover 66 London schools, culminating in a live musical extravaganza set to take place at the O2 Arena on 13 July with an expected 10,000 teens cheering their chosen top acts on as part of the schools charity The Transformation Trust‘s first birthday party.

I was a 24 year old mature student working nights to fund his psychology degree at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1979 in the Projects Arts Centre, the underground performance home to acts like U2, directors like Jim Sheridan and Neill Jordan. The Project was the hub of much of the best emerging artistic talent in the mid 70s and early 80s.

That started me on his rollercoaster career in the entertainments business. I raised the sponsorship to fund the biggest festival, a watershed in the history of the Irish arts 'A Sense of Ireland' (Jan to March 1980) that got U2 the performance that secured them their deals with Island Records and Chris Blackwell’s Blue Mountain publishing

Three decades later I have conceived this ground-breaking youth education enterprise called Blastbeat, which is successfully engaging teenage students internationally and now throughout Greater London empowering and cultivating the next generation of Bono’s and Richard Branson’s.

After 20 years of managing bands and running my own independent record label, Treasure Island Records, the tragic death of my younger brother in a road accident forced me to re-evaluate my life. While engaging in mediation (www.dhamma.org) I decided that education and empowering young people to be change makers was the key to change the world.

So I set about helping young people. Using my experience of the music industry, I wanted to inspire a vision where the buzz and competition of live music and the entrepreneurial assets of the business would come together to educate and engage the youth of today, arm them will the necessary personal experience, give them a real skill set to help them be the influential musicians and business moguls of the future.

So Blastbeat was born in schools where ordinary kids could become extraordinary in the space of three months.

The programme is currently working in 66 London state schools, where teens become cool change makers and help state the careers of artists and musicians.

With two competitive components, students form their own Music and Multimedia Company (MMC) and are assigned roles ranging from CEOs to talent scouts and video crew, publicists, journalists, marketing, sales, finance, production, PR and IT managers. 

They are encouraged to engage in their local community using their own resources and ideas, scouting for musical talent in their local areas. Through a series of 66 battles of the bands or acts organised and staged by the students themselves the best acts are determined by Music Industry professionals, the top six of six categories then get to the finals to showcase at the O2 Arena in front a 10,000 strong audience and some of the top people from every area of the music industry and offers follow for the best acts.

It's a tried and tested means of nurturing multimedia, musical and entrepreneurial skills among teenagers while encouraging them to work as part of a team, investing in their local community, experiencing what it is actually like to be apart of a social enterprise in the process.

I gave the Jedward twins their first job in the music business in May 2009 prior to their X Factor appearances where they helped judge the Blastbeat Ireland competition.

Check out what students and teachers say about it them selves and look at the intro video made by some of the Blastbeat teen alumni on the youtube Blastbeatuk channel and find out more at www.blastbeat.org and the Blastbeat creative network on www.blastbeat.tv