Testimonials

As Head of Music Publishing for Prince’s Trust Music, I wish to thoroughly recommend the organisation Defcon Workshops.

Defcon deliver a key service that provides young people with real opportunities to learn about the Music industry whilst actively creating and making music of their own. As the UK’s leading youth charity, The Prince’s Trust is very supportive of such practices, and we have been delighted to work with Defcon on their Future Youth Workshops project.

Throughout the project I have been very impressed by the expertise and dedication of Natty Sobhee, Aina Westlye and the Defcon team. They have brought enormous benefit and opportunity to hundreds of young people, most of whom live in disadvantaged circumstances.
Mike Cobb - Head of Music Publishing-Princes Trust.

My name is Tom Watkins and I am the manager of a music studio based in Bideford, North Devon.

As an entity started in 2006 we found setting up something like a professional music studio in North Devon very hard, with the lack of money in the area and with social economic and cultural derivation prevalent our business was struggling. We had a remit when we started our business to create a professional facility for our community and were determined to include the community, most importantly the young people.

We were contacted by Nathaniel from Defcon workshops asking to see if they could run some workshops at Yard 1 for the young people in the area and offer us support in developing workshops for the studio to run in the future.  Obviously we accepted and during the summer the Defcon workshop team ran a series of workshops from Yard 1. The workshops were amazingly successful, the young people loved them and got loads out of it. They then helped us run and develop our own workshops which we could run from the studios. These workshops are now the corner stone of Yard 1 studios.

Defcon workshops have continually been in touch with us since, offering help, support and inspiration. We now offer a series of workshops for young people to many different agencies including the Youth offending team, Children’s services, BBC blast, and various secondary and primary schools. We are now the largest studio in North Devon and still expanding mostly thanks to our work with young people.

We would like to offer our support to Defcon as they have done for us.
Tom Watkins –  Manager Yard 1 Studios.  

“Dear Defcon,

Just wanted to give a big thanks to the difference you have made to the lives of the people I work with. You by far run the best workshops I have ever booked and make it possible for my members to feel that anything is possible. What an absolutely great team of people, with great knowledge and very talented. All I can say is if you haven’t used Defcon then you haven’t used the best there is on offer, Whatever your requirement then Defcon have the Answer. 20 years in Youth Work and Defcon offer of first-rate value at very reasonable prices.”
Justin Wanstall – Senior Youth Worker (Riverside Youth Centre – Canterbury)

“Natty, Aina and Tom have been very easy to work with, open to the creativity and interests of the mixed group before them in the development of their voice, keyboard and electronic development of beat and sound. Furthermore they have inspired many of the young people to go forward with their music, now believing in themselves and restoring a sense of pride, dignity and worth.”
Steven Ridgwell  – Youth and Community Worker (Migrant Support Group – Folkestone)

“You were a fantastic compare-really making the event for the young people. I know that from the feedback they loved the workshops that you ran.”
Richard Newton (Head of Commercial, Princes Trust)

“Natty fosters self esteem through the way that he engages Young People, encouraging them to work co-operatively together and with other workers. The Young people on the Programme are keen to engage with Natty and find his sessions challenging and enjoyable.”
Paul Best (Co-Ordinator, YPDP, Childrens Trust)

“Since Natty has been with The Princes Trust he hasn’t changed. Aina and Tom are really friendly and work together well. At RESPOND we do everything ourselves so it was good to get extra professionals in to see how they work. We felt alright because they didn’t totally take over but listened to how we work. It was a Good three days – and then to go to the studio was heavy too. I feel we are getting somewhere. As I’m still developing my own Studio skills I found this whole experience helpful, can’t wait for Part 3.”
Shaine Knowles, 22 (Respond Youth Group, Peer Trainer)

Thank you for the professional, high quality music workshops, the variety of engagements within the Music Area created by Defcons crew of positive and extremely talented musicians, performers and producers.

The broad range of equipment and skilled practitioners enabled the large groups to be engaged from the outset in lyric writing, scratch mixing, beat production as the children and young people were thrilled to record their own songs and rhymes.

One of the most outstanding factors was during your performance the self motivated inclusion of children and young people requesting to join your performance and perform their own pieces, written and produced that very day, incredible, and testament to Defcons natural ability to draw out the hidden skills, achieving trust, rapport and positive mentoring with challenging groups of children and young people widening horizons and realizing talent
Cormac Martin (2008) (Participation Project Co-ordinator, Kent Children’s Fund

“Natty’s knowledge and passion for music, professional attitude, contagious sense of humour, technical ability as well as his patient ability to tutor a wide age group, with a varied degree of behavioural issues. The results produced from his endeavours have been tremendous, igniting the imagination of the young people he works with.”
(2006) (Arts co-ordinator, Arts in Motion, KCC)