Pedestrian Hosts Forum At Music Conference For Developing Joined-up Working in the East Midlands
On Friday 24th January 2020 Pedestrian held its second annual music conference especially for young people: the Perfect Score Young People’s Music Careers Conference, at Curve Theatre in Leicester. It was an exciting day packed with lots of music activity; including keynote speeches, networking, exhibition stands, discussion panels, workshops and live performances. 80 young people had the chance to meet and engage with real music industry professionals, who were very forthcoming and keen to share their knowledge and experience.
After the end of the conference a Partner Organisation Forum was held, with the intention of offering a space to explore future thinking and ways of developing joined-up working across Leicester and the East Midlands. Representatives attending the forum included those from local and national arts organisations; such as Pedestrian, HQ Familia, Arts Council England, Musicians Union, Leicester-Shire Music Education Hub, Soft Touch Arts, Technology in Music Education, UK Music, Creative Industries Federation, Steinberg Media Technologies, OHMI Trust, PPLPRS, Youth Education Project and our funder, The National Foundation for Youth Music. The forum also included young musicians involved with the Perfect Score project, who provided a valuable perspective to the discussions. Subjects covered in the discussion included music education, inclusivity and diversity, and youth voice.
Music Education
On the subject of music education, the importance of parental education was emphasised with the need to raise awareness of career opportunities in music among parents, including available roles and routes into the industry. Young musician Usman supported this, stating that he faced challenges gaining support for pursuing music from his parents, as they struggled to see the value of music or have confidence that he could forge a viable career in the industry. He also experienced challenges due to financial circumstances, such as the ability to pay for music lessons and other learning opportunities. Events like the Perfect Score conference can advocate for young people wanting to pursue a career in music, by demonstrating the range of creative careers and broadening the availability of information for young people as well as families. The need to obtain bottom-up evidence was highlighted, along with the need for a collective voice and campaigning at policy level.
Inclusivity and Diversity
The discussion then moved on to inclusivity and diversity. The focus was on overcoming the challenge of including voices missing from the current music industry discourse, and finding ways of supporting people who are currently facing barriers to participation. Ideas included thinking about who events are aimed at and attract, setting clear targets that you are accountable for, considering the diversity of performers and speakers at events, and undertaking outreach activities to broaden participation. A representative from Curve Theatre considered the bursaries offered for its Curve Community Company programme; they thought that they could take steps to demystify the application process and make it more accessible for disadvantaged people. Further initiatives discussed included creating an action plan, undertaking marketing aimed at young people, including youth voices on company boards, and offering employment opportunities to young people to deliver and/or market activities.
Youth Voice
Finally the discussion turned to youth voice. This conversation was centred on finding ways of including the voices of young people in arts organisations, and enabling organisations to navigate the challenges in doing this. Challenges stated include the fact that some parents and teachers see music as a hobby rather than a career, and defining what a young person is in terms of age range.
Ways of including young people’s voices could be:
- Showing them more about creative opportunities and careers
- Acquiring adequate funding to pay young people for their time
- Recruiting young ambassadors
- Identifying role models
- Developing creative ways of capturing evidence
- Engaging families
- Delivering careers talks and sessions with teachers
- Engaging colleges
- Facilitating experiences
- Organisations introducing people
- Broadening knowledge of opportunities
As the event concluded, the forum participants identified the following critical needs for their collective efforts to be effective:
- Motivation
- Better marketing
- Advertisement
- Social and networking skills
- Increased workshop delivery
- Diversity
- Support
- Funded free courses
- Role models
- More accessible training
- Greater access to industry standard studios, equipment and resources
- More awareness of the music industry and how it works
- A range of skills, including around genres, staff and music services
- More participation by young people
- More information provided to teachers
- Music hubs to support schools with including different music genres
- Increasing awareness among young people of opportunities in different musical genres
Final Outcomes
The assembled music organisation representatives were eager to work with one another to achieve common goals. Ways of joined-up working that they identified included attending careers events to represent the creative industries, developing a central web resource providing information about music career opportunities, the possibility of touring the Perfect Score project in schools, developing a multi-organisational yearly project, linking organisations together and then collaborating with schools alongside support by music hubs, and developing a directory of music services and freelance practitioners. The Perfect Score team and staff at Pedestrian would like to extend their thanks to all forum participants for their valuable time, attention and thoughts and very much look forward to developing fruitful future relationships and collaborative working.
