Youth Forum Members Jump To Stardom

Manchester Camerata’s Youth Forum is a collective of young people from Greater Manchester with a passion for music. In the past year they have have become active ambassadors for the orchestra, developing strong voices within the organisation and helping to shape the Youth Programme with their creative ideas for projects.

The Youth Forum is an extremely varied group of young people, including actors, playwrights, classical musicians, rappers, producers and singer-songwriters. This year, the young people have continued to reveal talents in newly explored artistic areas and have gained crucial experience in various artistic paths.

The ambitions of two of the members have recently been made a reality, with the announcement of Joe Keegan’s participation in the BBC 1 television programme ‘The Voice’ and Andrew Carleton’s role in a new musical television film of Victoria Wood’s stage play ‘That Day We Sang’.

Joe Keegan (below) was most recently involved in the Youth Forum project Life On Shuffle, where he consistently demonstrated his vocal and compositional talents. He is currently a participant on BBC 1’s The Voice, facing a panel of celebrity judges including Kylie Minogue and Tom Jones, and his music is now being widely recognised elsewhere. Click here to view Joe’s YouTube channel and click here for his website. You can catch Joe’s audition for The Voice on BBC iPlayer.

Andrew Carleton (right) is extremely involved in the Youth Forum, participating in many recent projects such as YOLOCabaret and REmix. He excels in singing and acting and brings new exciting ideas to performances. Andrew will play young Frank in Victoria Wood’s film ‘That Day We Sang’, which will be premiered in 2014. Read more about ‘That Day We Sang’ here.

Joe’s own song, Chinatown, won him the Manchester Irish Festival competition. He was then able to record the song at Northern Collective Studio.

To get involved with the Youth Forum or for more information on Manchester Camerata’s Learning projects please contact Nick Ponsillo, Head of Learning & Participation, on 0161 226 8696.