Merseyside Creative Futures

The Merseyside Music Education Hub Alliance supports Music Education Hubs across 7 local authority areas to deliver the core and extension roles of the National Plan for Music Education alongside broader work to support and provide access to music and cultural education across the Liverpool City Region. The Alliance is key part of the sub regional Music Education Ecosystem to help level up opportunities for children from all backgrounds to take part in musical education.

Based on our Alliance members evidence of need and mapping work to date, we have identified three core themes moving forward together as an Alliance in addition to the work of individual Music Education Hubs: - 

1. Young People’s Progression into the Creative and Cultural Industries 
2. Social Mobility and Inclusion 
3. Improved wellbeing for young people 

Merseyside Creative Futures is a programme to support young peoples’ aspirations and improve access to creative careers in the Liverpool City Region funded and supported by Youth Music and the Liverpool City Region Authority. To act as a bridge between the education sector and the creative industries working with partners such as Sound City.

The project aims to:

1. Increase teachers’ and organisations’ knowledge of the needs of young people in relation to their aspirations.
2. Strengthen our provision by combining young peoples’ concerns with industry needs to implement new initiatives, such as training programmes and work placements.
3. Empower young people from disadvantaged areas to work creatively to develop their career prospects.
4. Increase young peoples’ awareness of their potential in the creative arts.

As part of the programme we commissioned Dr Kate Blackstone to undertake a baseline survey and research work to help us design and develop the programme based on local needs and contexts.

Highlights from the report's main findings:

• Music-related employers’ qualification demands are wide-ranging and role-dependent. Whereas some music performance employers require no qualifications whatsoever, others require ‘extensive qualification and training’. However, it is important to note that training and qualifications are not one and the same: many performing musicians can have trained intensively without necessarily gaining a qualification afterwards. This has been evidenced in case study interviews undertaken for the second part of the research project: many performers reported that they required the training their degree provided rather than the degree itself. 
• Less performance-based job roles (for example management and publishing) usually require a university degree.
• All but two respondents are currently providing career development opportunities to young people. Larger employers deliver these independently and in conjunction with industry partners like local univeristies. On the other hand, other organisations whole business model is around career development. All music employers surveyed had, at some point, provided career development activities, suggesting that there is an awareness of this need in the sector.
• All respondents believe that links between themselves and the education sector could be improved. Some suggested more opportunities for ‘live’ promotion of their aims, whereas other simply hoped for more awareness around what they offer. Other employers suggested that education around the music industry might be improved.

Recommendations and next steps The findings from the survey highlight a number of key action points for us as a Alliance to consider and explore moving forward:

• Qualifications required for music industry jobs are not always obvious and clear-cut.
• A greater understanding of employers’ needs clearly communicated to young people might enable the future workforce to make more informed decisions about further study and employment. The Merseyside Creative Futures Case studies, a set of factsheets to be distributed to secondary schools, will help to inform this.
• All respondents had an awareness of the need for career development activities for young people in the region. The sample may have therefore been self-selecting perhaps only those who see young people’s career development as important completed the survey. This may indicate a wider issue locally, but, before forming any conclusions, further research is needed, perhaps by focussing on this aspect of the survey at another time.
• Greater links between the education sector and music employers would be beneficial. In the first instance, an online network could foster more collaboration between educational institutions/organisations and music organisations. In future, networking events could facilitate the exchange of ideas and might provide young people with the opportunity to connect with future employers or training schemes.

Over the coming months we will share the learning  and resouces from our Cretaive Future programme.

Ian Thomas Chair of Merseyside Music Education Hub Alliance, with many thanks to Dr Kate Blackstone from whose research this blog is based on.