When British Rock & Roll took off in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it garnered significant influence and international popularity. From the British Invasion of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the Who and Eric Clapton, the collective musical creativity captured a generation of youth, speaking to millions of hearts and minds. Now, there is another big concept out of England.

It began four years ago and is bringing music education into schools across the British isles. This next big idea is called FutureDJs, started by brothers Austen and Scott Smart. In 2016, they noticed the AQA Exam Board decided to classify a DJ deck as a musical instrument, which they believed could open a whole new avenue for music education in schools.

Defining the opportunity

UK exam boards AQA, OCR, and Eduqas now all recognize DJ decks as a musical instrument alongside the piano, violin, or guitar, which makes them a potential part of the music General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). Currently, there’s a huge demand from students. 

According to Austen, “About four years ago, there was an announcement about DJ-ing going to national curriculum in music and being recognized as an instrument. At that point, Scott and I recognized teachers didn’t know how to teach it. We had a relationship with Pioneer DJ (they were sponsoring us), and we brought them the concept of going to schools to write and teach one-to-one DJ lessons. That was the basis of it all. From there, we built out programs which got accredited by the London College of Music.”

Their team grew as more and more experts began to get involved. The brothers scaled the business with fifty teachers from around the country. Over the next few years, they had a very successful Cloud funding round which boosted everything the company was doing.

“We always wanted to do music production,” says Austen. It’s always a big thing for us and a huge driver for all of this. We talk about it as our central intent: How do we make music education accessible to everybody? That’s why we do DJ-ing lessons. That’s why we built the virtual classroom. And ultimately, it is why we began working with [the collaborative recording software] Soundtrap.”

A rocky beginning

In the beginning, it was an uphill climb for FutureDJs. Austen and Scott saw the potential immediately, but the classroom music teachers were a bit slow on the uptake.

“We’d say yes to any school that wanted us,” said Austen. “We said ‘yes’ to one school in the South, four hours away. We said ‘yes’ to another one, four hours to the North and another one three hours in yet a different direction.” 

Now Austen and Scott have a new book, FutureDJs — How to DJ: A Guide to DJ-ing and Electronic Music, written along with their friend Tom Dent. According to the publisher, “It’s perfect for the aspiring student with no prior knowledge as well as DJs looking to extend their skills and explore new genres.” 

“It’s an offshoot of the curriculum,” says Austen. “It follows the same teaching methods and has a similar structure. That was a project which took about two years to complete. It sounds easy to write a book. It’s not. We were fortunate to have many artists involved with it, some of whom were five-time world champions. I think these kinds of things helped us make inroads with certain UK schools. They can pick up the book and say, ‘Hey, these DJ guys are legit. They work for Faber Music. They work for the London College of Music, and they’re serious.”’

Even though FutureDJs is a technology business, the authors have an interesting take on technology discussions in their book. One of the things they do well is not being pigeon-holed into discussing particular decks and brands. They are keenly aware that tech will keep changing fundamentals, which is the focus of the book and the curriculum ─ the fundamentals that you must learn, applied to any medium.

It’s all about the students

To be sure, Austen, Scott, and the rest of the FutureDJs crew have one overarching passion ─ helping students love, learn about, and excel in music. 

“We have some really great alumni students,” says Austen. “The first one that comes to mind is Xandro, who opened Amsterdam Open Air’s main stage. This year, Emilia, one of our first students from our first school, was due to open up Amsterdam Open Air as well. We now have students in festivals across Europe. 

“And then, the other day, we saw one of our students from our virtual classroom appear in a session with the rapper, Ghetts. He is in his newest video, which was really special to see.” 

“You’ve got to be a proud papa,” says Austen. “These are your kids coming through.”

In England, as in the United States, many schools have decided to drop music education in favor of more Math and Science Curricula. Unfortunately, adding to the issue is that some music curriculum has become dated, tedious and no longer grabs students’ interest. That is a perfect justification for a program like FutureDJs. Everything they do is designed to make music relevant and appealing again while being fun and exciting.

Helping teachers teach

For example, FutureDJs works with five schools with around 300 music students who all have Soundtrap licenses, packed with the FutureDJs curriculum materials.

FutureDJs developed the curriculum with around 80 lesson plans, which is very in-depth. They’re not your typical bullet-pointed, piece of paper type lesson plans that you find online. They’re beautifully designed handouts, worksheets, exercises, with Soundtrap projects, and keynotes for the teacher. It’s everything they need to give them the confidence to teach a really engaging lesson, whether it’s about learning compression methods or composing simple melodies, or creating a simple song using loops in Soundtrap.

These five schools with Soundtrap materials and licenses also benefit from CPD sessions via their virtual classrooms. The sessions show the teachers everything from managing their accounts to teaching composition effectively and understanding the music students like.

“It’s easy for someone to dismiss a genre that they don’t understand,” says Austen. “But it’s crucial to build a bridge between what they need to learn and what they want to learn. We think that’s a very powerful tool when it comes to young learners.”