A NEW music video plans to get listeners to SMILE.

Core Music, in Hexham, has teamed up with Paul Susans, the bass player with renowned North-East band The Bahgddies and a highly respected and experienced community music practitioner, to dream up the idea of SMILE as a result of the effect the Covid pandemic has had on the arts and music in particular.

SMILE is a reflection, in musical form, of the impact of Covid on the ability and opportunity for people to get together and create and play music. The project was designed to involve people of all ages with a specific focus on creating current and future opportunities for young people and the impact the arts has on their lives.

Paul said: “There is massive potential for the arts to be a key part in helping our communities recover and move forward over the coming years, particularly with a focus on creating opportunities for young people.

“The SMILE project hopefully highlights this as well as being entertaining and fun to make. The effort and commitment of the participants has been absolutely fantastic. People filmed and recorded themselves is such creative and innovative ways.

“Once I had all the recordings it then became a mammoth but hugely rewarding task of putting the whole thing together. Around 50 people of all ages got involved and I really feel we’ve managed to bring people together across our community and we are very proud of the end result.

“Music in all its forms, lifts the spirit and all of us would like to think this project will bring a SMILE to people’s faces”

Mike said: “Core Music’s association with The SMILE project has been a joy. Paul and the whole team have worked tirelessly to get it all together and have shown a real and genuine understanding of how to bring people together in supportive and encouraging way.

“This is a genuinely collaborative community project and certainly shines a bright light on how important the Arts are to our young people and society in general. We are looking forward to welcoming everyone safely back to Core Music as we reopen our doors on 13 April and we hope to be able to run more projects like SMILE in the coming months”