Latest developments at Youth Music
Update from Matt Griffiths, Executive Director.
Believe it or not, I’ve been in post for almost a year now leading Youth Music in the next stage of its development. I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to visit many of the projects we support and talk to those people on the ground who are working tirelessly to change young lives through music. In my first year on the job I’ve gained some real insight into the successes, opportunities and challenges that children and young people in local communities across England face.
The pace of change within music education is rapid and that includes what’s been happening here at Youth Music. I was delighted and honoured to be appointed as Executive Director as I have always admired the charity’s commitment to significantly increase music-making opportunities for children and young people who wouldn’t normally get the chance. Whilst this commitment continues, what we’ve changed is how we go about it. I thought it would be useful to share with you our latest developments.
Vision, Mission & Values
We’ve refreshed our Vision, Mission & Values to clarify what we stand for and what we do. It’s vital to get this right and keep it as a living document rather than something set in stone.
Our Vision confidently expresses that life-changing music-making is available to all children and young people. 'Life-changing' because we know it can be. 'Available' to ensure that music-making can be experienced by all children and young people who want to.
Our Mission makes it clear that we're not in the business of delivering music programmes and projects; that’s the role of the 331 fantastic organisations we currently support. Our role is to identify and invest in these organisations in full knowledge that they’re providing learning opportunities for those with ‘least opportunity’ using our outcomes approach to evidence the impact on the lives of children and young people. ‘Least opportunity’ reflects the challenge a young person may face in accessing music-making due to, for example, living in a deprived area, in care or as a result of a disability.
The main focus areas in the Youth Music Programme continue to be ‘Children in Challenging Circumstances’, ‘Early Years’, ‘Encouraging Talent and Potential’ and ‘Workforce Development’.
Our five core values are now defined as ‘creativity’, ‘intelligence’, ‘excellence’, ‘equality’ and ‘change’. We use these values to guide all that we do to achieve our Vision & Mission.
Driving fresh thinking
We have been able to gather considerable knowledge of the music education 'map' in England including areas of good practice, cold spots, breakthrough projects, and useful local and regional data regarding indices of deprivation, levels of employment and educational attainment. We use this intelligence to inform the priorities and scope of our funding programme and to drive fresh thinking and thought leadership in music education.
The Youth Music Network - our online community of several thousand music education professionals - is a key vehicle for sharing best practice, disseminating research, enabling peer learning and partnerships amongst the organisations we fund.
We plan to give attention to a greater connection between children and young people's music making out of school with what they do in school. The research tells us that the number of young people opting to take GCSE and/or A Level music is reducing, music-making activities in school time are being squeezed; yet music in all its forms continues to be made, listened to and enjoyed outside school by the large majority of young people. For example, in a recent survey, 80% of 15-24 year olds described music as a ‘passion’.
Fundraising
We're now implementing our new fundraising strategy with a proposition focused on our mission of access to music-making for children and young people with least opportunity. Why do we need to fundraise? It's simple - there are more children and young people to reach. Our application process tells us that demand from organisations outstrips the investment we can supply. For each child who benefits from our investment, there’s another child still to be reached.
Staffing structure since April 2012
The staffing structure from April 2012 is now bedded in. As a result, we've significantly reduced our overhead costs. The staff team is now 18 strong, down from 48. This has sharpened our focus and, most importantly, puts more investment than ever before into a more diverse range of organisations in England delivering grassroots music-making. The restructure was a tough process to have gone through but the right thing to have done.
New visual identity
The final part of the rebranding process has been the creation of a new visual identity. Our primary audience are the organisations we support and the organisations who support us. This means we wave goodbye to our current logo (affectionately known as ‘Bongo’ in the office) which aimed to appeal to children and young people themselves. Recognising that children and young people aren’t our primary audience (rather, it’s the primary audience of those organisations we support), we felt a change was required.
We are very grateful to M&C Saatchi who kindly offered to help us on a pro-bono basis on the creation of our new visual identity. Their involvement has been invaluable and I would particularly like to thank David Kershaw and James Lowther for being so generous in the giving of their time and expertise.
Our new logo concept and branding guidelines will be in use from the launch day of Monday 15 July 2013. In the meantime, if you are a Youth Music grant holder, we suggest you now run down your stocks of literature and any other materials where our old logo is included. Many thanks in advance for your assistance with this to make sure the switch over runs smoothly.
I hope this update is helpful for you and of course do let me know if you’d like to discuss any of it. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank you for your energy and commitment to ensure music-making is for the many and not the few. Every day we see remarkable stories and evidence of how children and young people have achieved amazing things with their music-making. Your support is very much valued and appreciated.
Very best wishes
Matt Griffiths Executive Director