The Sunday Column: David Brewis
The musician and producer reflects on his work with We Make Culture, a Sunderland-based charity supporting young people through music and creativity.
Drawing on his own experience with Field Music, David looks at the real-world barriers facing young musicians today - and how projects like the Young Musicians Project are helping to break them down, one song, one rehearsal and one act of belief at a time.
Last week, Ethan Stayman, one of the members of We Make Culture’s Young Musicians Project1 released his debut single. He recorded the song at home in Pelton, County Durham on an iPad, using Garageband (which, if you don’t know, is software which comes free with iPads and Macs) and a USB microphone. It’s a brilliant track and he’s both delighted and shocked that this personal, almost-private creation is now out in the world.
In fact, it’s been an extremely busy start to 2026 for our young musicians, several of whom have just released music for the first time. The process - which has involved scraping together studio time, stitching together press releases, coaxing, cajoling and a great deal of love and care - has brought home some of the barriers which young musicians face, and which the team at We Make Culture are always trying to find ways to combat.
And that’s partly because all of the music leaders at the project have faced some combination of those same barriers through our own careers.
So what might those barriers be?
Firstly, equipment. It’s hard to get good if you don’t have an instrument to practice on at home, which is why we offer instrument loans. Recording equipment is less expensive than it used to be, but it’s still expensive so we try to provide lots of opportunities to record either at the Field Music studio, where we’re based, or at other local studios.
Then there’s expertise. When my brother and I started making music seriously, we didn’t know anyone who had made a record or been on tour. Along with our friends in bands like The Futureheads and This Ain’t Vegas, we had to figure that stuff out without any guidance. The downsides of that (wasting time, making mistakes, feeling massively out-of-our-depth) greatly outweighed the upside (a resolutely forged DIY spirit).
It’s a privilege and a pleasure to be able to pass on the knowledge that we’ve gained to our young people, though hopefully without sounding too much like a boring, know-all grandad.
Perhaps most importantly of all, community. So much music-making has become a solitary activity. Writing and recording can be done on headphones in your bedroom. Social media provides an unrealistic impression of how to create and how to share your ideas. There are fewer youth clubs. Small music venues are struggling.
Also (in probably a good way) licensing at music venues and pubs is much, much stricter now, but there hasn’t been enough of an upsurge in all-ages venues to balance out that change. It’s at the very heart of We Make Culture to create spaces where people can come together and support each other, to be friends and cheerleaders.
And then there’s opportunity. It’s easy to get a gig if you already know other people doing gigs, and you already know where the venues are and who runs them. But when you’re outside of that, it feels like a secret society - you can just about sense that it exists but you have no way of accessing it. It’s the same with releasing music, or getting it in the local music press.
It’s our job, and our duty, to recognise this and invite young people in. And then when they’re in, we must keep the door open so those opportunities aren’t a secret for the next young musician that comes along.
It’s heartening to see first-hand that each of those barriers can be overcome. Ethan may not have needed to borrow a keyboard, but I’m fairly sure that the expertise, the opportunities, and the sense of community he has found at the Young Musicians Project have helped give him the confidence to send his beautiful music out to the listening public. And the wonderful work he’s created inspires us to keep breaking down those barriers.
We Make Culture is a Sunderland-based charity using music, creativity and youth work to support young people facing barriers to participation. It delivers year-round programmes, including the free Young Musicians Project, providing space, instruments and professional support to help 13–19-year-olds develop, collaborate, perform, record and release music across the city.
What a beautifully written piece. Sunderland's a Music City!