{"id":20801,"date":"2025-01-10T19:09:30","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T19:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/ed-sheeran-meets-young-people-on-visit-to-belfast\/"},"modified":"2025-01-10T19:09:30","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T19:09:30","slug":"ed-sheeran-meets-young-people-on-visit-to-belfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/ed-sheeran-meets-young-people-on-visit-to-belfast\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Sheeran meets young people on visit to Belfast"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Ed Sheeran said he had seen “so much young talent in Northern Ireland”<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The music superstar Ed Sheeran has met young people and teachers during a visit to Belfast.<\/p>\n

His visit to the city was part of the launch of the Ed Sheeran foundation, which supports the teaching of music in schools.<\/p>\n

It aims to improve access to music for young people by providing instruments and opportunities for performances.<\/p>\n

Ed Sheeran visited music organisations in Belfast alongside Snow Patrol star Gary Lightbody.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Gary Lightbody said the arts were “criminally underfunded in Northern Ireland”<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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James Ayo of Hotbox said that the Ed Sheeran Foundation’s backing would enable them to support recordings and performances by around 50 musicians.<\/p>\n

Sheeran also spent time with young people at Drake Music NI, a charity which helps adults and children of all abilities make music.<\/p>\n

Gary Lightbody has also previously supported the charity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

‘Such a buzz to see young talent’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Speaking to BBC News NI, Ed Sheeran said that an increasing number of schools across the UK were not offering music lessons to pupils.<\/p>\n

Sheeran said that he “wasn’t good at any other subjects apart from music” at school and that music gave him “value in myself”.<\/p>\n

He said that music and the arts are an important export for the UK, and it “seems weird that nobody’s putting any importance on the next generation”.<\/p>\n

He said that it had been “such a buzz coming to see so much young talent in Northern Ireland”.<\/p>\n

“There is no lack of amazing people and projects there is just a lack of funding and interest,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Speaking to BBC News NI Lightbody – who was one of the founders of the Oh Yeah Music centre that music was “criminally underfunded in Northern Ireland”.<\/p>\n

Lightbody praised Sheeran’s work and said it was “amazing that he has included Northern Ireland”.<\/p>\n

“We never get included,” he added.<\/p>\n

“I would have definitely loved at that age, you know 14, 15 years old of having something at school that I could have latched onto.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While in Northern Ireland, Ed Sheeran also made a donation of guitars to and met with music teachers from Belfast Boy’s Model, Col\u00e1iste Feirste and Malone Integrated College.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC Ed Sheeran said he had seen “so much young talent in Northern Ireland” The music superstar Ed Sheeran has met young people and teachers during a visit to Belfast. His visit to the city was part of the launch of the Ed Sheeran foundation, which supports the teaching of music in schools. It aims […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[420,5985,70,7920,2198,506],"class_list":["post-20801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-n-ireland","tag-belfast","tag-meets","tag-people","tag-sheeran","tag-visit","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20803,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20801\/revisions\/20803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}