Youth Music Impact and Learning Reports 2013-14

Youth Music investment requires organisations to work towards intended outcomes for their young participants, with an explicit focus on personal and social development as well as musical progression, going beyond ‘access’ to embed a culture of musical inclusion. Some projects have a focus on strengthening the music education sector with intended outcomes for their workforce and organisations. At the end of each project, organisations submit evaluation reports giving evidence of how far they have achieved their intended outcomes. These reports form the basis of our annual impact report.

In previous years we have presented evidence of Youth Music’s impact as a funder together with the impact of the projects we fund. This year, we have decided to separate these out into two documents: the Impact Report and the Learning Report.

The Impact Report explores Youth Music’s impact as a funder: investing in a strategic and intelligent manner to ensure projects are located in areas of greatest need; supporting the workforce (both online and offline) to deliver music-making projects of the highest quality; working in partnership to develop a stronger music education sector; and building a robust evidence base to demonstrate the value of music-making for young people. Top-level summaries of the types of outcomes being achieved by projects are included, but detailed analysis of these can be found in the Learning Report.

The Learning Report is drawn from final evaluation reports submitted by projects which closed between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2014, and from milestone evaluation reports submitted by continuing projects within this period. It examines the musical, personal and social outcomes for young people.

This year, the resultant findings helped inform the basis of our new outcomes framework, the core of our refreshed funding programme.