A couple of weeks ago we finally opened the Rockhaq community to all members, and to celebrate this ‘soft’ launch we held free music journalism workshops for teenagers at Costa Coffee Queens Road, as part of ArtBeat Festival 2015.

ArtBeat takes place in the Clarendon Park/Queens Road area of Leicester annually and this is where Rockhaq founder Michelle Dhillon grew up and went to her first ever gigs. It was only right for Michelle to give something back to the local area, so we held free and open music journalism workshops for teenagers and introduced them to the Rockhaq community at the same time.

The music journalism workshops had very good interest and attendance and one student (from Wyggeston & Queen Elizabeth I College) even managed to solve the wi-fi connection issue that plagued us all at the start. Nevertheless, Michelle opened and led the session, explaining some key principles of writing music reviews and getting to grips with posting reviews on the Rockhaq music journalism community.

Michelle highlighted examples of great music reviews written by other Rockhaq community members, explaining what made them stand out and why. The reviews featured in this segment of the music journalism workshops included Mark Wong’s review of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album, his review of The Strokes Is This It? debut album, Khia Bianca’s annihilation, or live review, of Drake and Sam Brookes’ review of Tyler The Creator’s Goblin album.

Reviews from Rockhaq community members formed the backbone of the music journalism workshops, and hopefully you’ll be able to see why. Each community member has their own – sometimes biting – voice, but they still show great examples of analysing music techniques, production styles, to lyrical content and giving a wider social, political and historical context to the piece of music being reviewed.

By the end of the music journalism workshops, each student came away having started to live blog their own reviews on the Rockhaq community, and some left very high praise for the sessions. Here are some comments we received:

“At school, you’re given something and told to write about it. Here, you can actually write about what you want. I’m really looking forward to getting into loving writing again, I think I’ll enjoy being on Rockhaq!” – Music Technology student at Leicester College

“Thanks for such a great session, it was great to be able to spend my time talking about music and bands with others who understand where I’m coming from.” – Music Technology student at Leicester College

We love running music journalism workshops and look forward to (hopefully) running more over the next year. Although Team Rockaq can’t offer free music journalism workshops as standard, we’re always happy to arrange paid music journalism workshops. Just contact us about our music journalism workshops with your dates, numbers and any aims, and we’ll get back to you in 24 hours.

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