During lockdown, 13 year old, Rufus came up with an original project in order to complete the volunteering section of his Duke of Edinburgh's Award; he has composed a song to raise awareness of environmental issues and recruited two musicians, based in Germany, to record it!   They recorded the song in a small music studio to help create a demo for Rufus to share.    

Watch the Video here: 

Rufus explains how they collaborated remotely on the project whilst he was based in Arundel, West Sussex: “We all got together using Skype and the film is the result, you can see we had great fun!  We used BandLab to record each layer of the composition and Dima and Fernanda had lots of ideas which sounded great. They would sing and play guitar and I would watch and listen via Skype. We would then discuss different ideas. I discovered that working in collaboration really helped bring the song to life. My plan is to complete the structure and lyrics of the song and then I hope to record it with the orchestra and singers from Churcher’s College to perform an epic song that we can release across several platforms to raise awareness of the issues and how young people everywhere are passionate about them.”   

The volunteering component for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme usually involves working in the community, however the recent pandemic has provided Rufus with a unique opportunity to pursue an alternative route: “If we were not in a lockdown, I would have volunteered with local environmental, nature and animal charities. We recently watched a BBC documentary with David Attenborough where they were talking about re-seeding forests. I want this to be a metaphor for this song, planting a seed of hope for the future.”  

Rufus is now contacting local, national, and global environmental charities to share the song and his message. 

We wish Rufus all the best with this musically inspired new venture!