Young DJ Academy

The Young DJ Academy is a training organisation set up in late 2005 by Mark Finn. Mark has been working in the voluntary sector in Ireland for 10 years and has been a long time music lover and DJ. Mark is joined by Evan Kenny this year, who has been working in the voluntary sector for 9 years as well as being involved with bands, percussion circles and dj’ing since his mid teens.

The academy provides DJ and music workshops in local youth projects with the specific aim of involving young people in fun activity based programmes that can lead to a career in DJ’ing. For some young participants, these workshops are just a fun experience and chance to learn some new skills and spend time with friends. In both cases the central focus of the training is to engage young people in a positive learning process which develops their skills, confidence and abilities.

The academy idea grew out of a rising need to provide training to young people in youth and community settings and began with running some workshops in collaboration with a small number of projects based in Dublin. These workshops became very popular seeing the academy training young people in areas such as Cabra, Blanchardstown, Rosemount, Ballybough, Summerhill, Ballymun, East Wall, Crumlin, Dolpins Barn, O’Deveney Gardens, Coolock, North Strand, Ringsend, Donnycarney, Finglas, Ballybrack, Dun Laoghaire, Parts of Cavan and Waterford City to name a few. As well as the training mentoned above the academy has been involved in projects like community summer music festivals, graffiti and rap workshops as well as performing at regular community discos.

2010 sees the launch of the brand new Young DJ Academy training facility in Finglas business Park. We have just opened the facility to provide one to one training for individuals who are interested in learning to dj. The training room is rigged out with technics Turntables, Pioneer CDJ 1000’s and Pioneer DJM 600 mixing controller.