The Push and FReeZA.
In Q1 2023 we conducted interviews with our youth arts partners. Below is a summary of The Push’s programs as told through the interview with Kate Duncan and Aarti Desai.
https://www.thepush.com.au/about-the-push
https://www.thepush.com.au/freeza
“Our work is guided by our purpose of giving every young person the opportunity to participate and thrive in Australian music.”
The Push is a Melbourne based, Australian youth music organisation. For over three decades The Push has supported ‘millions of young people with access to contemporary music programs and events’. It is an institution in its own right and has shaped the music industry across Australia.
A key program in the work that The Push does is the FReeZA youth development program. FReeZA:
Was established in 1997 to provide affordable and accessible music and cultural events in safe venues for young people and to give local performers development and regular performance opportunities
Provides young people aged 12-25 across metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria with opportunities to access live music events and other cultural, recreational and artistic events that are drug, alcohol and smoke-free in supervised and safe venues.
Gives young people the opportunity to become a part of a FReeZA committee to make decisions and lead in the staging of events, whilst also broadening networks within the community by connecting with local businesses, schools and other organisations.
Enables young people to build self-confidence, create and develop professional relationships, and explore various education and employment pathways in the music industry.
Provides important performance opportunities for local musicians and emerging artists to showcase their talents through state-wide competitions such as the annual Push All-Ages Tour.
How FReeZA works
Kate Duncan (CEO)
"Delivered in partnership with local government FReeZA providers, the All Ages Tour trains up teams of young people to put on high-profile all-ages events in their local communities. I would say that they develop foundational literacies like cultural and civic literacy, because young people are getting local community insight, understanding and working in a council context."
The young people that generally participate as team members in this are underage - 16 to 18 is the age range. In most cases they are doing this on top of their high school, and their level of involvement involves a weekly committee meeting.
Different young people will get involved for very different reasons. You'll have some young people who participate because they're looking to meet like-minded people and make some friends. And then you've got some people that might be, “I wanna work in the music industry. I wanna, you know, this is an opportunity for me to start my career pathway”. For us if it's a career pathway, or to develop social connectedness that’s equally as important.
Aarti Desai (Manager, Education and Training)
The All-Ages Tour is effectively a series of all ages events in Victoria where we work with FReeZA committees in local areas. FReeZA is a program where young people come together to put on events for other young people in their particular area. It's often supported by a local government youth worker who brings those young people together and helps facilitate it.
There's a lot of tasks that need to be undertaken over a 6 to 8 month time period, and there really is a sense of buy-in and ownership from the young people who want to see it through and see it succeed.
The Push coordinates the headline artist, and we do the marketing campaign for all of the shows across the state. We then work with local teams about finding a venue, who the local artists should be, the run sheet for the day, and to do some of the marketing work: Is this poster cool?
The Push delivers training to the teams that starts from whatever stage of the event planning process they're at. So if it's at the very start, it's about finding a venue and how to negotiate with a venue, and the process of putting on an event. As it gets closer to the event, it might be more around how to run a door at an event, how to do ticketing, and how to manage the queues.
The Push runs online training that is a mix of information giving but also doing activities online together. The FReeZA worker will support the young people in actually doing the planning and management and we support both the FReeZA worker and the young people.
Kate Duncan
There are also templates and resources that The Push develops, such as templates for artist contracts, venue booking agreements, or draft budgets. Each of the local teams are given an amount of funding that they have to decide how they are going to spend. They need to make sure that they have accounted for venue fees, artist fees, security, first aid, catering - all the elements of staging an event. They then need to go away and decide as a group: “OK. How are we going to allocate this budget”. We provide an overarching framework, but it's really up to them to figure that out collectively as a group with the guidance of their youth worker.
A lot of lessons are learnt on the job in that event context. They might realise when they're running the event that: “We should have used certain marketing assets to engage particular audiences”, or “We shouldn’t have scheduled the event on the school holidays”. It's all through that real life on the job experience that they learn.
The 21st century skills and capabilities that young people develop
Kate Duncan
I would say all of the competencies and character qualities.
Aarti Desai
I think so. I would also say ICT literacy, financial literacy and cultural and civic literacy as well. Because I think you're sending a lot of emails, and setting up a lot of spreadsheets, and managing a lot of information around like when this artist will be there versus. when that artist will be there, versus when the production company will arrive and when will the security arrive. You know, it's like lots of moving parts.
It is also about cultural and civic literacy. It is a government event, and so understanding how government works, and what the priorities of local government are, and kind of setting something up that lines up with that.
I think especially on the day of the event, you prepare as much as you can, but you're always kind of thrown into it at an event. People come to you with problems and you're like “I don't know”. And so that problem solving is important, as well as communication and collaboration. And creativity usually becomes a part of problem solving. The problem is a problem because no one has been able to find the solution yet. Sometimes it's just like “Oh, well, if we just, you know, I don't know, move the back of house area to another spot this will be fine”. You have to think outside of the box of what would ordinarily be done in an event.
Kate Duncan
I would also say creativity in terms of design of the artwork and curation of the music or the artists that are performing. And there are young artists that are performing as well. So creativity in terms of their art as a craft.
Young people’s pathways beyond The Push
This conversation relates mainly to The Push’s industry mentoring program
Kate Duncan
It's such an unusual time to be commenting on this because of the impact from the last few years of the global pandemic. We know that there is a skills shortage across the live performance sector and we see that as an opportunity for young people wanting to start a career, as a lot of long standing practitioners - such technical production and event crew have left the sector.
The research that we're seeing - Live Performance Australia have done a lot of work in this space - is that there is a decline in the number of young people pursuing study and training in the creative arts, and that there is also a decline in the number of young people more broadly wanting to pursue a career in the creative arts. That said, The Push and the community of young people around us, are very committed to working in this sector. Since March 2020 we have seen the majority of young people that have come through our programs go onto paid employment in the sector.
Aarti Desai
My experience in the three years has been that most of the young people that have connected with us have gone on to work in the industry and they haven't left yet. They aren’t sick of it yet. But maybe in 10 years that might have changed. But at this stage most of the people who connect with us are very committed to this. They really love music, or events, or whatever part of the industry they're working in. And they go on to work in that sector.