Sense College Loughborough is pleased to share the fantastic news that one of our students has been nominated for a Lord-Lieutenant's Award! The Lord-Lieutenant's Award for Young People recognises the great achievement of young people living, or attending full-time education, in Leicestershire.

Thomas has been nominated for the Young Artist of the Year Award, which will be awarded to a young person who has demonstrated skill, innovation and expression in visual arts, expressive arts, literature or music.

Thomas is a keen musician, playing piano, keyboard and church organ, as well as singing in a choir, conducting, and even writing his own music! Thomas has been playing the piano for about 8 years now, but he enjoys all of his musical activities equally. For Thomas, music is a way of expressing feelings, and is something he loves to do. At the moment, Thomas is playing a lot of classical and Christmas music, and sometimes plays songs from musicals.

It was suggested that Thomas should be nominated for the Awards by Melton Mencap, after Thomas played keyboard at their Christmas Family Open Day in 2019, which he has done for a number of years now.

Thomas is currently studying for a Level 2 Diploma in Music Practitioners at Loughborough College. Thomas is enjoying his course and has learnt how to use different music software, some of which he had never used before, and has learnt about the music industry, which he wants to continue learning about.

Also, Thomas is part of a band at Loughborough College which performs on Wednesdays. There are 6 musicians in the group, and Thomas plays the keyboard. Thomas enjoys performing music on his own and with others. He has played at small charity concerts previously, which has helped to build Thomas' confidence greatly.

Thomas is currently working hard towards achieving Grade 8 on the piano, as well as running his own YouTube channel; ItsTCThePianoMan. Thomas has used his YouTube channel to upload videos of backing music that his choir can use for their virtual rehearsals this year.

Thomas would love it if more people would visit his YouTube channel, and has asked us to share this message:

''Please view my YouTube channel to listen to my music and singing. Please click on like, leave a kind comment and subscribe to my channel. It is free to subscribe, it just means you will receive notifications every time I put a new video on. Also remember to click on the bell and change the setting to ''All'' to be notified of all the videos instead of just some of them. Thank you very much for your interest and support!''

You can visit Thomas' YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCODxwy2M4hTagwdkhr7UH0g/videos

The Lord-Lieutenant's Awards are being held virtually on Tuesday 17 November 2020 at 7pm. Audience members can watch a live stream of the Awards by clicking on the following link; https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVyXV2Iqs0060xYKwMkQseQ/featured

Good luck, Thomas, from everyone at Sense College Loughborough!