GMMAZ is a creative music education company, funded to provide high quality music making activities for young people. Our main funder is Youth Music, and we're part of a larger organisation called Brighter Sound.

We’re based at Band On The Wall on Swan Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, where some of our activity takes place. Band on the Wall is a state of the art venue hosting acts from all across the world.

We believe in encouraging young people to find their own voice, whether literally through singing, spoken word and lyric writing or by picking up an instrument, and creating something original.

Since we were founded in 1999 we've run a wide range of projects, from single day workshops in schools, to huge projects involving young people from all over Greater Manchester lasting months, and leading to major public performances.

We've helped young people to write music, and perform at places like the Bridgewater Hall, the Lowry, Band On The Wall, Royal Northern College of Music and Contact Theatre.

The kind of activity we run depends on who it's for. But it includes:

• First time taster opportunities to get involved in music
• Music workshops for beginners – including musicians and vocalists
• One to One mentoring
• More advanced music-making projects for young people with more experience
• Training for young leaders
• School projects
• Projects in communities - community centres, youth clubs

We work with guitars, decks, drums, percussion, music software, MCs, choirs, soul singers, orchestras, brass, strings – in fact, anything that our participants want to work with. We help to develop skills in performance , songwriting, collaboration and arrangement as well as musical skills, from basic playing onwards.

Our activity is usually free to participants, and everyone is always welcome. Our artist teams (the people that run the sessions) are friendly and very experienced in working with any level of ability, in literally any genre. If in doubt, give us a call and we can talk to you about what to expect.

You often don't have to play anything already, but if you do, bring it along.

We work with young people of any age - up to 25.

We do most of our work within the communities of Greater Manchester, although we do central work at Band On The Wall as well.

To get a better idea of what we do, check out or videos and pictures on the other page.

For more info, sign up to our Facebook page and keep an eye on our site to find out what's happening near you!

The GMMAZ team