Our Leadership Challenge...
Following the recent launch of the Arts Council’s Cultural Education Challenge, a call for the arts, culture and education sectors to work together in offering a consistent and high quality, arts and cultural education for all children and young people, a key ingredient of the successful delivery of this challenge will need to be local leadership and how that leadership of the music and cultural education sector outside of London is supported and developed.
How is leadership in the cultural and music education sectors nurtured and supported coupled with the retreat of some local authorities from their role in arts and culture funding and local leadership over the next few years, could this be an opportunity to refresh and renew?
How do we develop leadership which achieves a shared ambition and purpose in a fast changing education sector? Which innovates within the cultural education sector, developing the leaders and the evidence of our impact in order for us to tell our story to young people, schools, parents and funders and to drive forward this important agenda over the months and coming years through a difficult financial climate developing a holistic approach to fostering the health of the whole cultural education ecology for children and young people:-
“I am delighted that the Arts Council England is contributing to this drive for more cultural education in our schools through the cultural education challenge. Throughout England there is the most extraordinary potential for cultural education: concerts, galleries, exhibitions, and an enormous supply of creative young people willing to work with children. Harnessing such potential can be a challenge, which is why I am delighted that Arts Council England is taking on this task.” Nick Gibbs, Schools Minister
“The cultural education infrastructure we currently know is eroding” (Steve Moffitt, A New Direction)
There are many examples across the country which need pulling together and sharing and examples on different ways forward in the climate we are in and will be going forward. Over the past 18 months we have been developing and testing out a new federated Music Education Hub model across Staffordshire, Stoke on Trent, Shropshire, and Telford & Wrekin bringing together 4 Music Services, a shared In Harmony programme, 3 Music Education Hubs, Arts Council funded organisations and 2 Youth Music funded organisations into a shared federated partnership.
Our shared aim, as a federated Music Education Hub, is to join up the informal and formal music provision across our four local authority areas, accessing new sources of investment and clearer pathways for our young people which closes the gap between young people who come from families who are more likely to access cultural provision and those families from backgrounds that mean they find it more challenging to access cultural opportunities.
We have found three ingredients as Music Education Hubs lead partners that have been shaping our work and our thinking:-
- Developing leadership across the Music and the wider Cultural Education Sector which can develop a shared vision, shared purpose, can lead innovation and new ways of working to pull together and lead partnerships, joining up the dots and joining up progression opportunities, leaders who can challenge arts organisations and also challenge within schools and other environments to ensure that they can get what they need to deliver high quality music education opportunities to young people, to seek new forms and sources of investment such as from Housing Associations, Apprenticeship funding, EU Culture funding, developing a programme of peer to peer learning and support visits across our Music Education Hubs, starting succession planning now;
- Developing a strong and robust research led evidence basis for our work and making our case for investment to a range of funders, head teachers, school governors, school business managers and stakeholders with a strong and realistic evidence base behind you;
- Making the case and telling our combined story around our impacts and successes having a place on school governing bodies, arts organisations boards, business breakfast events to develop corporate partnerships, relationships with school business managers as well as the Head of Music in a school, developing a series of simple info graphics to tell our story simply and quickly, use of social media to get messages out, developing a series a case studies and short films, developing a parents advocacy pack similar to the USA Arts Education Alliances to use parent power with low take up schools, having a presence at parents evenings and transition days.
The real prize is to close the gap between those who have a rich cultural and music experiences and those who simply do not. It can be done and there are examples from across the UK of this happening such as through Youth Music funded programmes and the 6 In Harmony programmes. It needs well evidenced and targeted use of funding from a variety of public and private sources, putting young people really at the centre of the planning and the delivery, and a strong and continued repeat engagement with local families and local schools. This needs consistent and strong local music education and cultural leadership with committed partners who are there for the long term and who put young people high quality outcomes at the heart of the offer.
The potential of Music Education Hubs is to offer a platform of really rich possibilities for our young people through embracing a wider set of inclusive agendas and partners.
Ian Thomas, Chair Telford & Wrekin Music Education Hub