MIKEY KIRKPATRICK

Mikey Kirkpatrick is a flutist, singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, and performer who has released multiple albums and toured internationally under the stage name Bird Radio, as well as collaborated with musicians, filmmakers, poets, theatre practitioners and sound artists. He specialises in extended flute techniques such as circular breathing and voice work, and has trained in Western, Asian and Middle Eastern flute styles. He is currently exploring extended improvisations, both acoustic and with live-looping technology in parallel with reiki practice and shamanic Journeying techniques.

Mikey is also an associate lecturer in music and education at Goldsmiths University in London where he is the founding director of Alchemy, where young people in South London who are facing barriers receive professional music training and access to experienced youth workers in a safe and supportive environment that promotes listening, constructive friendships (and future networks of support) and alternatives to non-violent and violent crime. Alchemy operates with a student-led and collaborative model, with a music-based pedagogy, inspired by Paolo Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ and bell hooks’ “Teaching to Transgress.” Top-down education is avoided, and participants are given agency and responsibility to design their learning collaboratively with professionals.

Mikey’s practice both as an artist and an educator focuses on how deeper listening and musicality can be beneficial and healing for individuals, relationships, communities, society, and the environment at large. His online classes for Morbid Anatomy ‘Music, Healing and Deep Listening’ and ‘Sonic Rites and Rituals’ have led to the formation of the MHDL Collective who regularly release albums of new material online and past participants meet regularly as The Apollo Club.