Interview with Helix Arts

Helix Arts are one of many centres taking part in Mozfest Fringe with Arts Award. For more information, check out the Arts Award Blog by clicking the banner at the bottom! Be sure to pop there w/c 17th October to for the Mozfest takeover!

Firstly, can you introduce yourself?

Helix Arts are art organisation who work with artists across Art forms and a wide range of ages and priority groups to ensure equality of access to the Arts. We are delivering a 2-year Youth Music project called Off the Beat.

Why have you opted to take part in Mozilla Festival?

As part of Off the Beat, a Digital Youth Music project, we wished to experiment with the challenges and explore the potential collaboration opportunities that live digital streaming can bring to audiences and participants. We hope testing things at Mozfest will help us collaborate better with other youth music making projects as well as artists around the world.

What do you hope people will get out of your Fringe session?

People attending the Off the Beat music workshop will hopefully have fun and contribute to a collaborative music piece as part of the long term programme. We hope participants will also feel part of a network. This workshop will work towards widening the Off the Beat family where we everyone can continue to share and collaborate and support the project in future.

In what ways do you think technology will continue to push art, and vice versa?

Technology in Off the Beat will assist us in understanding how music can reach more people through the use of digital tools and platforms and widen the audience for the arts as well as create more innovation approaches to collaboration and musical response.

With coding being pushed hard in schools, where do you think the balance should be between computing and art in education?

Firstly it is not all separate, a cross curricular approach is always best as a way for enabling. At Helix Arts, we are big believers in art in education…not sure we can answer that, but we are very pro-art in education and digital here!!!

What is one piece of technology that you think has truly changed the world?

The electric Telegraph!

Editor's note: That's email, for those who don't know what a telegraph is!

Is there a particular area in technology that you are excited to see develop further?

Real time music collaboration and production technology.

Do you have any advice to young people who might wish to enter the industry?

Get as much advice as possible through helpful arts organisations and their staff!
Keep your CV as an artist up to date that reference work you have actually done so people can refer to it, especially any voluntary work related to your field.
Sort yourself out a simple word press web page to share what you are up to and your aspiration for work.
Be aware of your online presence!!!

Where can people find out more information about your work? Do you have social media accounts that people can follow?