Tune into Resonance 104.4fm on Tuesday 16th of November at 5pm for episode 36 of Raft!

This month I am joined by the Alchemy team, featuring recordings from the Alchemy Takeover of the NX Records record store in New Cross, London, on 13.11.2021. With performances by Alchemy artists, Rezon8 and the UYT Collective.

Alchemy is an evolving collective of professional artists, youth workers and Goldsmiths university student ambassadors and placement students working with Lewisham organisations and schools to offer a wide range of professional music skills training, mentoring and performance opportunities to local 13-18 year olds. The project is led by musician and associate lecturer in music and education Mikey Kirkpatrick, made possible by Goldsmiths (Widening Participation, Music, Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies Departments in partnership with The Albany, Deptford.

Instagram: @goldsmithsalchemy

Alchemy was originally founded by musician and associate lecturer in music and education Mikey Kirkpatrick in partnership with Jake Armstrong (Addey and Stanhope School) and Lucy Grace Trotman from the Widening Participation team in April 2017, with support from Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies youth work placement students James MacGregor and Marie-Jo Lasme. It began as a 10-week pilot working with 15 students and quickly grew into a weekly Saturday Club in the music department at Goldsmiths, offering the young participants the same access to high quality resources used by music degree students. The project has now worked with over 100 young people, released multiple mixtapes and given performances for Goldsmiths University, Lewisham Live, Lewisham People’s Day, The Albany Theatre, The Migration Museum and more. Many participants have gone onto music colleges such as ELAM, and two recent Alchemy ‘graduates’ began degrees at Goldsmiths in 2020.  Ex-participant Kieron Morris aka KamZz has also launched his own youth label Rezon8 in partnership with Alchemy and The Albany in Deptford.