Recap: London Grantholder Gathering
Earlier this month, thirty-one representatives from Youth Music-funded organisations delivering projects across London met at Conway Hall for our first-ever grantholder gathering, which gave grantholders the opportunity to get to know Youth Music and each other through a jam-packed schedule of Youth Music procedural guidance and grantholder networking and practice-sharing.
Over the course of the day, attendees got a whirlwind tour of essential information for grantholders, shared about their use of the Youth Music Quality Framework, absorbed guidance on project evaluation, and learned about how they can use different communications tools for promoting their projects—for example, press releases and blog posts on the Youth Music Network.
The group was also treated to an invigorating musical energiser led by Catherine Carter from Fairbeats! and got the opportunity to meet Adam Jeanes, senior relationship manager within the London music team at Arts Council England.
Of course, much of the most interesting learning on the day came from the group itself in the discussion session. Attendees were asked to share about two things:
- an element of their work that their organisation does really well, and
- a challenge that their organisation has encountered or an element of their work that their organisation would like to improve.
Notably, many organisations identified similar strengths around high-quality music-making and good support for children and young people from challenging circumstances. Interestingly, many organisations were also facing similar challenges, particularly around project evaluation, partnership working, and progression routes.
Project Evaluation
Following a stimulating session earlier that day on project evaluation, a majority of the organisations in attendance expressed that they were interested in improving their evaluation practices but that they faced practical challenges to doing so.
Many struggled to find the capacity to conduct their evaluations. In some cases, they needed an extra person in the room during sessions to collect the data but found it cost-prohibitive to pay for an additional music leader or youth worker. Some organisations suggested that they had solved this problem by hiring instead an apprentice or a trainee to collect the data.
In other cases, they were able to collect a wealth of data but found it overwhelming to try to analyse all the evidence. Youth Music senior grants and learning officer Nick Wilsdon stressed that you don’t need to analyse everything—just the most relevant indicators that can clearly tell you about your progress toward your intended outcome.
Attendees also discussed the limitations of standard evaluation scales and were keen to share about creative methods of soliciting evaluation data. For example, with early years, you could ask them to draw pictures about their experience of the project and explain to you why they decided to draw it that way. With older participants, you could ask them to do mock interviews with their future selves discussing the impact of the project on their lives.
One attendee made the powerful suggestion that the best way to approach evaluation was through a change in mind set: rather than treat evaluation as a requirement for funders, approach it as a tool for reflecting on your project, improving your practice, and giving young people the opportunity to make their voices heard. In this way, evaluation can be a really empowering practice.
Partnership Working
Many of the organisations in attendance were working in partnership, and they agreed that their projects had benefitted from the partnership, particularly in cases where each partner was able to offer a different set of skills, knowledge, and resources that could help shape and improve the project.
Partners will often have different motivations for wanting to be involved in a project—and that’s fine, as long as their goals are ultimately aligned! That’s why, attendees agreed, key partners should ideally be involved in a project from inception, so that they can make sure their aims are aligned and manage expectations.
Attendees also noted that it’s especially important to have these conversations early on when setting up new partnerships or when the partnership is between very different types of organisations, such as a specialist music organisation and a school. Each organisation will have its own particular language, assumptions, and ways of working. It’s critical to build in time for understanding each other’s approach and setting up joint ways of working.
Progression Routes
Many organisations in attendance were interested in, and concerned about, progression routes for their participants. Following the Musical Progressions Roundtable initiated by Awards for Young Musicians, there was a recognition that musical progression can take many different forms and that no one organisation can cater for all individual needs.
Organisations therefore need to be aware of each other’s provision so that they can recruit from each other and signpost children and young people onto further opportunities. Sound Connections’ current research project Taking Off will be an important tool for exploring and promoting this networked approach to musical progression in London.
In particular, finding suitable progression routes was a real concern for those working with children and young people in the outer boroughs. Currently, more advanced music-making activities tend to be concentrated in central London, and that journey can be a challenge for those living in the outer boroughs, where there is less access to public transit.
A first step to addressing this issue is Musical Progression in Outer London Boroughs, a report produced for the Roundhouse by Wired4Music, Sound Connections’ music council for young Londoners. However, there remains more work to be done toward understanding the progression journeys of young people in the outer boroughs and how community music organisations can work together to better cater to their needs.
What Next?
The discussion session took a problem-solving approach to addressing the challenges that organisations are facing. Already within that session, attendees were able to share with each other about how they had tackled similar issues within their own organisations in the past. I’ve shared here about some solutions that were proposed, and I hope that you will all use the London regional discussion group as a way of continuing the conversation and sharing your practice with each other.