Our clients at Youth Music are always coming up with new and innovative ways to get young people involved with music and this summer's Youth Music Box is no exception.

Based at the Southbank Centre for the next 6 weeks Youth Music Box is an 'interactive musical experience', allowing you to create your own unique track and video in under 10 minutes.

You can then go onto the website, find your video, tag yourself against it and share it with your friends. For those that can't make it to the Southbank Centre there is also an online version where you can create and record your own music. We are currently working on integration of the site with Facebook to help spread the joyous sounds even further afield.

So after a hard weeks work getting the site ready for launch last Thursday, we felt it was only right to pop along and try it out for ourselves. Our verdict - great fun for everyone but remember... you are being filmed!

www.youthmusicbox.co.uk »

Last night we had the pleasure of taking out some of our wonderful clients from Youth Music for a night of good old fashioned campness.

We have had the pleasure of working with Youth Music for over 4 years now working on some really exciting projects with them, most recently Music Is Power and Underage Festival a competition giving teenagers the opportunity to perform at the Underage Festival this summer.

So when we heard that Priscilla - Queen of the Desert, the cult Australian film had just opened at the Cambridge Theatre in London - it was too much of a good opportunity to miss. There is a small taster of the experience in the video above :)

It turned out that we were all slightly under dressed for the night!? But a great time was had by all and we ended the night with cocktails - just because it seemed the right thing to do!

A great night, perfectly summed up by Dulcie from Youth Music

"I've vowed to make sure I have more sequins and leopard skin in my life now"

I think we could all live by that motto - Mark?

Almost famous

It's been quite a good week for us in terms of press. We were in Marketing magazine for our latest Detox with Evian campaign. Then yesterday we were in New Media Age about the Passport to Music project we won for Youth Music. We also heard something is being written about us in AMO magazine.

Codegent is to design and build the digital elements of Youth Music’s ‘Passport to Music’ initiative. Youth Music has developed its Passport to Music as a major new pledge to the government backed Music Manifesto – a campaign for improvement in music education. Research has shown that children often give up learning instruments when they move from primary to secondary school. ‘Passport to Music’ has been designed to encourage the continuity of children’s learning by giving them a digital record of their learning and allowing them to interact with their peers and mentors.

The new site will feature a video diary using the latest Red5 technology that means children can film themselves using just a webcam that will encode straight to flash. Teachers can review students’ diary entries and comment by leaving their own video entry.

David Hart, Director of Codegent said:
“It was great to be chosen by Youth Music for this very exciting project. We have plans for a lot of clever functionality that will address the problems faced by music educators when their students move from primary to secondary school.”

Trish Thomas, Executive Office at Youth Music added:
“We chose Codegent because of the innovative technical solution they offered and their genuine enthusiasm in responding to the brief. We look forward to a successful relationship with Codegent.”

Youth Music is a UK-wide charity set up in 1999 to provide high quality and diverse music-making opportunities for 0-18 year olds. It targets young people living in areas of social and economic need who might otherwise lack opportunity and predominantly supports activities which are held outside school hours.

Youth Music receives £10m a year National Lottery funding through Arts Council England. It has also levered in more than £13.7m in partnership funding from other sources.