Help Jasmine raise Abbey Road Institute tuition fees.

Jasmine Wembankoy is organizing this fundraiser.

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Welcome! My name is Jasmine Wembankoy and I need your help to get me into Abbey Road Institute.

I'm looking to raise £15,920 (currently reaching halfway the amount!) for my offered place on the highly exclusive Advanced Diploma for Music Production and Sound Engineering at the Abbey Road Institute. I originally applied for the Scholarship but did not acquire it, however the panelists were impressed with my application and offered me a place provided that I could pay for the tuition.

My Background

Some from the outside looking in may say that my journey has been one fuelled by delusion, but I say it's by perseverance. I grew up in Islington, London. A thriving community of creativity and culture, however, navigating the complexities of social mobility has always been challenging.

As a child of someone struggling with severe mental health, financial growth or security was not a possibility. The norm around me was dysfunction, poverty and pain at home. The only way I was able to get away from it was discovering love for creating music, as I saw it as way to distract me from the problems at home. There have been curveballs, disappointments, but many incredible opportunities which have led me to experience a touch of my dream to work professionally in music.

I didn’t come from a traditional music background, I got into music because of my love of video games. My favourite soundtrack is from the game assassin's creed II, composed by Jesper Kyd. I’d obsessively research how the music was created and I was introduced to the world of music production. Ever since, I’ve wanted to learn how to write my own music. I would transition from messing about on the piano at school, to learning how to use logic Pro (Production Software) composing my own ideas of video game music, to writing and releasing my own music under my artist name Safii Koii over the years.

I studied at East London Art and Music in 2017, volunteering for my sixth forms engineering team and was then encouraged to pursue a bachelor's degree in music production at Leeds Conservatoire in 2019, where I was the only black girl on my course. I was also a mentor at my local youth club, creating opportunities for young people to record their music and teach them how to use Logic Pro. Since then, I’ve gone on to experience many incredible things like being able to say I composed music for a film at the age of 18, hearing my music on the radio and playing my first festival.

I also post my music and covers on Tik Tok, where I recently went viral for a cover of Kate Bush's Army Dreamers. The video currently sits at 1.7 million views and I amassed 16k followers within a week. This further instills within me that music is what I was made for.

Why

With your support, I hope to not only realise this dream of becoming a professional sound engineer but to also give back to my local community. I want to be able to share what I've learned and encourage other young black women to get into music production/sound engineering as women only make 2.8% of music producers and an even smaller number are women of colour.

I would benefit from having access to high quality teaching and facilities the institute offers would help open a door to working in this industry. That is what drives my desire to pursue further education. There is also an opportunity to apply for a work placement at Abbey Road Studios, which would be a full circle moment for me as I had the opportunity to record there with my secondary school choir to raise money for the charity Broaden Their Horizons.