Rufus Raises Environmental Awareness with Song

13-year old pupil Rufus has approached the volunteering section of his Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award with a unique project; he has composed a song to raise awareness of environmental issues and recruited two musicians, based in Germany, to record it!  

The musicians are guitarist, Dmytro Trush, and vocalist Fernanda De Araujo, they work with Rufus’s father in Munich, Germany, and 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 worked together on the project whilst he was 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; it was brilliant for me to learn from such talented musicians.  I discovered that working in collaboration really helped bring the song to life.” 

Rufus tells us more: “This is my first composition outside of schoolwork and I’m really happy with this demo performance. 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.”  

How is it volunteering for the Duke of Edinburgh? Rufus says: “If we were not in a lockdown, I would have volunteered with local environmental, nature and animal charities. As this was not possible, I chose to raise awareness through music which I hope shows the gravity of the situation but also hope that if we come together now, we can make a difference. 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.