Lewis spoke of the need to “match our cutting edge creative ideas with an equally creative global business strategy which ensures we can benefit from the new jobs and growth of the future”, adding that “The Conservative-led government has so far failed to provide the strategic leadership which is urgently required, and in education and the arts, they are implementing policies which are damaging the foundations of our creative success.” Other demands made by Lewis included a call or more cross-department working within government and for the collation of rigourous data about the sector.

The creation of the network is to be welcomed we think; it’s too easy for us all to work in our own silos, and an opportunity for a real opportunity for sector leaders to come together – to share ideas, develop joint initiatives and present a coherent set of policy recommendations – can only be a good thing.

In response to Labour’s plans, a couple of ‘morning after the night before’ points that our experience here at the hub immediately called to mind are:

1. Firstly, in terms of learning the business skills required to generate private investment, not all businesses want to become global enterprises, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need help to develop their business skills.

We’d say that Labour’s review needs to listen hard to the multitude of small businesses which together form the backbone of the creative sector about their ambitions and development needs.

We’ve done a lot of work with small businesses like this, for the Arts Council, various former Regional Development Agencies and the Learning and Skills Council, and know a fair bit about their business development needs, and what works and what doesn’t. We’d hope to follow up on this with the network, and would be happy to share what we know and plans we’ve developed for a Joining the Dots programme that in part will do just this.

2. Looking at the fairness pledge, which aims to ensure those signed up to it offer internships and jobs on the basis of merit rather than social background, we of course support that proposition. Who wouldn’t? However, many small businesses still find the costs of offering creative apprenticeships prohibitively expensive and CC Skills appears unable to get its head around the idea of small businesses offering a ‘collective’ apprenticeship, potentially across SMEs sharing creative industries ‘hub’ spaces. This is something of a hobby horse issue for us – and has been in our discussions with CC Skills down the years.

For the time being, internships are often the only way for small businesses to provide the entry level experience that is so important to those entering the creative sector these days. And many -ourselves included – pride themselves on offering an incredibly valuable, carefully sructured opportunity. Public sector support to help the ‘common man’ small businesses in the sector to provide more financially rewarding entry level internships would surely be a good thing?

3. Next, arts organisations are businesses, regardless of whether they have charitable status or not. Their business aims may be charitable, or they may be ‘for profit’, but either way, they are still businesses. It’s semantics you might argue, but we’d say the semantics get in the way of a bigger, cultural issue for the cultural sector. We work a lot in the music sector, and here the economy is very mixed, with individual artists working as micro businesses, and a multitude of small businesses working tirelessly to survive. These guys have to operate as businesses – albeit with charitable or social entreprise models – if they are to survive. So, using common terminology, are these guys, are we, an arts organisation or a business? We tend to describe ourselves an ethical business working in the creative sector. 4. And finally, back to that point about rigourous data. Yes, absolutely that’s needed. And without giving too much away, we’d suggest that everyone keeps an eye on info coming out of the National Campaign for the Arts l ater this autumn. We’re working with the NCA at the moment, and can’t say too much, but there are some really interesting numbers being crunched at the moment. If you want to keep up to date with that then sign up to our hub email newsletter.

And so to today’s work…

Over the next three months we’ll be working with the NCA, which campaigns and avocates for the arts sector across the UK, to help the organisation chart a new strategic course. At a time of almost unparalleled change in the sector, this is a crucial point in the NCA’s history, as it looks to identify how it can provide the most effective support to those working as artists or in arts organisations.

To help determine the organisation’s next moves, our work will include surveys of existing and former NCA members, plus widespread consultation with a good range of people working in the sector, and in funding, policy-making and umbrella organisations.

We’ll also be surveying the 21000+ people who’ve pledged support for the I Value The Arts campaign.

This feedback will inform our work to develop a set of strategic recommendations for the organisation from 2012 onwards.

More details here as the surveys go live…

Brand new and unique in the UK, INTERROGATE! will take place between 23 and 25 September, taking a fresh approach to looking at income inequality, its impact and what we can all do about it. We hope that INTERROGATE! will be game changing, inspiring people – people like you and us – to take action.

Taking place on the Dartington estate, a home for forward thinking for 85 years, it’s a spotlight on a serious issue, but it’s also about getting inspired and having fun.

We’ve spent the last few months lovingly constructing a programme that lines up some of the UK’s most forward looking thinkers and activists – plus some fiercely funny comedy and cabaret shows, great gigs and all manner of other performances – to get you inside, under and on top of the issues.
Whether you’re someone who shouts at the telly during Question Time, you work in an area where income inequality is an issue, or you just fancy a weekend of thought-provoking ideas and performance in the beautiful Devon countryside, Interrogate is for you.

Our thinkers and activists are some of the sharpest minds in the worlds of economics, social policy and health – for starters, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, authors of the best-selling The Spirit Level; TV’s favourite geographer, Danny Dorling; Economics for Dummies author and lecturer Peter Antonioni and environmentalist and co-founder of the Transition Network, Rob Hopkins. Also taking to the stage are comedian Mark Steel with a special one-off show; multiple award-winning musicians Spiers and Boden (of Bellowhead fame); and the acclaimed Jean Abreu Dance company.

Aside from the performances, debates and podcasts, there are loads of opportunities to have your say. Tell us what you think on Speakers Corner, add your thoughts to our People’s Manifesto or join the Interrogate Choir. We can pretty much guarantee you’ll go home feeling inspired, having had a great time, made some new friends, thought a bit, and laughed a whole lot more.

Keep an eye out here and on twitter (@juliaatthehub) for full programme details over the next couple of weeks, and book tickets via the Dartington website. Fair play to us all!

Producer Matthew Linley is already on site, pacing the site and glancing anxiously at the skies (seems the weather’s going to be great though – it’s been worth keeping our fingers crossed all week!), and others are busy packing for the journey to Dartington tomorrow.

The line up is a corker. We’re very excited about the line up: Suzanne Vega is headlining (one of only 3 UK shows this year – the others being Glastonbury and Hyde Park!), alongside: Songlines Best Newcomer nominees Tamikrest; Alejandro Toledo and the Magic Tombolinos; Sheema Mukherjee; Max Pashm, and Perunika.

Like festivals used to be when we were nippers (well, sort of…), HOME is that all too rare chance to get up close and personal with exceptional artists, and – as an added bonue – in the beautiful the Dartington estate.

Find out more on the Dartington website.

Hope to see you there…. Don’t forget the suntan lotion!

Off the back of the success of last year’s sellout, HOME has been expanded to two days this year – 24/5 June.

We’re very excited about the line up: Suzanne Vega is headlining (one of only 3 UK shows this year – the others being Glastonbury and Hyde Park!), alongside: Songlines Best Newcomer nominees Tamikrest; Alejandro Toledo and the Magic Tombolinos; Sheema Mukherjee; Max Pashm, and Perunika.
Like festivals used to be when we were nippers (well, sort of…), HOME is that all too rare chance to get up close and personal with exceptional artists, and – as an added bonue – in the beautiful the Dartington estate.

Find out more on the Dartington website.

Hope to see you there…. Hurray! It’s nearly summer!

We’ve been working with the team at WeDidThis to involve fans in the development of the piece, and raise money along the way.

£25 to spare… Why not buy a line of verse from the play?

For £75, a whole verse can be yours, read out and personalised by Murray and sent to you as a unique MP3.

Find out more about how we’re hoping to raise £4000 this way on the WeDidThisUK site , and keep up to date with all the latest news via hubster Matthew Linley’s blog.

On 15 March the hub and PRS for Music Foundation joined forces at Tate Liverpool for the closing public event of our New Music Plus… North West programme.

Panellists and audiences from across the performing and visual arts explored how collaboration between independent producers and larger arts organisations can catalyse and sustain innovation. Thanks very much to all who came along and made this such an inspired afternoon of thoughts, discussions and ideas!

We’ve recently made a couple of short films about the producers and host organisations involved, so if you couldn’t make our Tate event and want to know more, do check them out . You can also check out some video interviews filmed by PRSF trustee Michael Noonan. Happy viewing!

First off, you can download the Gigzine app created by New Music Plus… participant, Steve Symons, to receive exciting content and information about this event. Already available on the app are features on two of our producers, Jon Hering and Glenn Boulter, and over the next few days we’ll be adding other video and audio content, and information on all panellists. Those of you attending the event you will be able to use the app for exclusive interaction throughout the day. Download it now and click here to meet Steve and find out more about the app and how it works.

We’re also planning on posting live updates on the discussion on Twitter. Take part with hash tag #NMPNW and follow @juliaatthehub and @PRSFoundation. We encourage you all, whether you are attending the event or not, to join in the discussion via our live Twitter feed. This is a great way to have you say – from inside the venue, or anywhere else in the world!

For further event information, and to book one of the last few remaining places, click here.

Rock The House is a music competition with a political twist; as well as showcasing unsigned bands and artists, it will raise political awareness of the need for copyright protection measures and inform MPs and the general public as to the importance of copyright protection within the creative industries.

We first met the MP, who worked in the music industry for a number of years himself prior to beginning his political career, at a Westminster Media Forum event, where we were presenting our research into public sector support for British music export. He’s a clearly well-informed advocate for the creative industries sector, and we’re looking forward to taking our discussions on export further at our next meeting.

Backed by industry bodies such as UK Music and Music Managers’ Forum, and by key players such as Live Nation and EMI, Rock The House is looking to showcase the newest and most talented bands and the most innovative live venues.

Bands and venues have until 31 March to put themselves forward, via their local MP, who will make nominations to a judging panel of music industry heavyweights on behalf of their own constituencies.

Winners will be announced by the end of May and all competition finalists will be invited to attend an exclusive event on the Terrace of the House of Commons on 30 June. Further information is available at the Rock The House website.

Whilst broadly welcoming the report, there are a number of comments we would like to make, principally in relation to the need to ensure that future developments in music education encase all genres of music, and that they build on existing examples of best practice. We’ve not responded to each and every recommendation, and for reasons of brevity, we’ve not included the sometimes lengthy recommendations here, choosing instead to substantiate our comments by drawing on the body of relevant research we’ve carried out in recent years.

Recommendation 1:
We’re pleased to see a reference to “listening, reviewing and evaluating”, but would make a plea for this to opportunity to be offered not only to children who are themselves players or singers, but also to children more generally who, whilst not being players or singers, have an interest in music. At present, the formal education sector effectively abandons at a relatively early age those children who do not continue with their playing, meaning that they are then only exposed in the main to mainstream pop music. This has real implications for not only their creative development but also in terms of the encouragement of a next generation audience. Our own experiences suggest that its lack of exposure to a wider range of music, rather than an implicit dislike of other genres, which inhibits listening (and playing) behaviours in later life.

Recommendation 4:
We’re pleased to see a commitment to enabling progression for the widest range of young people. However, would ask the government to take note of, and respond to, the DCSF-funded research we carried out for the Centre for Young Musicians which demonstrates that there is a real dearth of progression opportunities in jazz, folk and world music. With the Wider Opportunities programme having increased young people’s exposure to these genres, post Key Stage 2 opportunities ‘nose dive’, with a school lottery determining in most boroughs the nature, scope and indeed the existence of any further provision. We would draw attention to the recommendations we made into our accompanying report:

• Inclusion of more English folk music as part of Wider Opportunities provision, contextualising it as the domestic iteration of world music (itself an umbrella term for many regionally- and culturally-specific, traditional musics)
• Increased Key Stage 3 jazz and world music
• More (visible) progression routes for young musicians in these genres at local level (see recommendation 30);
• Higher number of DFE Music and Dance Scheme places for talented young jazz, world and folk musicians
• More joined up planning and delivery between formal and informal education operators (see recommendation 14)

Recommendation 6:
Having carried out research in 2009 into the music opportunities offered to children and young people in London as delivered by Arts Council England, London’s then Regularly Funded Organisations, it’s encouraging to see this recommendation. It’s widely recognised that music RFOs such as these work with tens of thousands of young people each year, and that their varied approaches provide a multitude of ‘ways in’ to music for young people. Here, the diversity of the work done reflects the RFOs’ differing missions and strategic aims, and the partnerships which underpin their work. Where an organisation’s mission means that linking its young people’s activity to curriculum objectives is an appropriate focus of its work, we believe that this would further strengthen links between such organisations and the formal education sector, something which is to be welcomed. However, we would not recommend that organisations whose mission does not offer a means of meaningfully delivering curriculum objectives should inappropriately skew their offer in response to this recommendation.

Recommendation 8:
Again, based on our RFO research, as well as on work carried out for the Greater London Authority around its Music Education Strategy, it’s clear that partnership working is behind a significant amount of young people’s music making – in the formal and informal sectors. Anecdotally, these partnerships are ‘powered’ by highly individualised sets of relationships and networks, and the RFOs’ relationships with so called ‘gate keeper’ organisations – primarily local music services and other local authority departments – are crucial in terms of enabling RFOs to forge appropriate delivery partnerships, develop curriculum-friendly projects and gather invaluable on-the-ground intelligence.

Recommendation 10:
This is great, and we’re fully behind the idea of a National Music Plan. However – again in reference to our work with CYM on progression routes for young jazz, folk and world music players – we urge the government to ensure that any such Plan includes provision for ensuring young people’s progression in all genres. Here, this has implications for Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisation decision-making and the exact nature of the funding agreements made with new NPOs. For instance, if Arts Council believes it is making a contribution to an organisation’s work in total, a requirement to meet its education-related objectives should appear in the agreement.

Recommendation 12:
At present there is no recognised music education quality framework to which Arts Council funded organisations must adhere; approaches to evaluation are diverse and of differing quality, as are the methodologies which underpin them. As such, we are pleased to see a recommendation around the standardisation of evaluation practice, assuming that provision for the specific context in which work happens, or the children involved, is taken into account.

Recommendation 14:
This recommendation around Music Education Hubs echoes calls for made at the GLA’s Music Education Summit that we produced back in January 2009 for the Authority to support and advocate for emerging education hubs in the Capital, and for the Authority itself to play a role in networking and coordinating formal and informal sector organisations in all the London boroughs. This summit suggests that there is a clear appetite for so-called Hub working in the Capital at least, and so we’re pleased to see this recommendation being made.

Recommendation 17:
The recommendation that “Youth Music should be prevented from spending any government or lottery funds on lobbying and public affairs activities” is extremely worrying. At its most fundamental, the recommendation implies that no organisation in receipt of government and lottery funds should be allowed to have a lobbying or advocacy role, something which we believe is seriously misplaced and at odds with the highly valued ‘arm’s length principle’. Beyond this, Youth Music’s role as an organisation which is engaged in supporting best practice and – through its MusicLeader initiative – workforce development means that were it to abide by this recommendation its value to the sector in sharing best practice and advocating for the resources the sector needs to deliver such practice would be lost.

Recommendation 20:
Much to support here, but again we would reiterate the importance of ensuring that talented young musicians from all genres benefit from such progression opportunities.

Recommendation 21:
A great aspiration, and one where we’d like to see some involvement or liaison with Youth Music’s MusicLeader programme. In national membership research we carried out for MusicLeader in 2009, some 52% of respondents to a survey of its members (who indicated they weren’t a music leader) said that they worked as either a primary of secondary school teacher. At the same time, nearly half of all such members also indicated that they had participated in MusicLeader training, clearly demonstrating the valuable role that the programme has established for itself as a provider of sector CPD. Through working with the national MusicLeader team on this research, it’s clear to us that there is a wealth of experience and knowledge which could very usefully be put to work on developing appropriate ITT course content.

Recommendation 24:
Interestingly, less than a third of music leaders who took part in the above MusicLeader research said that they would be keen to see the programme accredit its courses, and when asked to identify challenges they anticipated facing in the next 5 years only 20% identified ‘gaining a formally accredited qualification’. In focus group discussions about the value of accreditation there was a good deal of ambivalence, on both the supply (music leader) and demand (employer) sides. As such, we’re not convinced that even were such a qualification introduced there would be significant take up, unless it was mandatory. MusicLeader itself has done more research into the issue of accreditation and quality assurance within the sector (witness its ongoing development of its nascent Code of Practice), and we would recommend further consultation with the MusicLeader team.

Recommendation 25:
If this recommendation read that “conservatoires should play a greater part in the development of a performance-led Music Education workforce” and not that they should be “recognised as playing a greater part….” then we would be in agreement; conservatoires should be required to play their part in workforce development – alongside other training and support providers, such as MusicLeader. However, as the recommendation stands at present, research we’ve carried out suggests that some conservatoires have neither the commitment to providing a fully-rounded professional training – one that equips students with both the creative and business resources they need to establish and sustain a successful career in music – or the ability to do so. In particular, research carried out by the hub for the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund suggested that curriculum planning in many conservatories pits musical study against more practical, professional development-related sessions and that – on the whole – the pervading culture is one where wider professional development is not a priority amongst those responsible for curriculum planning and delivery. In short, conservatoires seem not only to simply focus on the performance aspects of professional training, but to have little regard for the wider professional development that students need if they are to develop a sustainable career as a musician. Looking at the kinds of careers music students can expect, our MBF research found that in the previous financial year, nearly half of professional musicians aged under 26 who took part in the survey had earned less than £5000. Little surprise then that, when asked what would prevent them from becoming professional musicians, the primary reasons cited were not having the skills they needed or fees being insufficient to live on.

The next generation of music educators need a fully rounded professional music education, and we would argue that conservatoires in isolation are not able at present to deliver this. In this context, we would urge government to ask the conservatoire sector to significantly increase its connections with the MusicLeader programme in particular. Our experience of evaluating such as partnership – between MusicLeader Yorkshire and Leeds College of Music – demonstrated clearly the value to students of such a partnership in terms of adding an extra dimension to their professional training.

Recommendation 26:
Here we would simply comment that the picture painted here of musicians teaching first before becoming performers does not tally with the careers our research suggests that music students have. The reality suggested by all our research is that both music students in their first years out of college, and those with more established careers, do in fact have portfolio careers where the amount of time spent on, and fees earned from, performance and education work are finely balanced. We’d also comment that the term Music Education is not limited to work simply in schools, and that programmes like MusicLeader help to equip music leaders with the skills they need to work in the informal education sector and in other settings such as hospitals, prisons and other institutional settings.

Recommendation 27:
Given the proven value of leadership training in the cultural sector, we welcome this recommendation, and would ask that any developments here take into account the track record of programmes such as the Cultural Leadership Programme and MusicLeader.

Recommendation 28:
Whilst agreeing that there is significant value in looking to provide a quality assurance framework that is recognised and valued by both parents and sector employers, we would ask government to recognise that registering on a database does not in itself assure quality on the part of the person who has registered. Research we carried out into MusicLeader’s Code of Practice pointed to the importance of such a kitemark being underpinned by rigourous practice if it is to be valued by music leaders themselves, by employers and by parents.

Recommendation 30:
The lack of clear signposting for both parents and young musicians themselves is a widely-acknowledge issue, and one that was debated fully at the GLA’s inaugural Music Education Summit in 2010. When asked what the solution to this problem in the Capital might be, the loudest call was for the Authority to create an online ‘one stop shop’ that would aggregate content from the myriad of other information provided by individual organisations in the capital. As such, we welcome this recommendation, and hope that the process of compiling Local Authority Music Plans will facilitate this.

Recommendation 33:
Given that young people today are part of the so-called ‘digital native’ generation, we welcome any recommendation around the exploitation of digital technology in music education practice. The research we carried out for Arts Council England, London into its then RFOs provision for young people showed that those which were making the most creative use of such technology – for creative purposes but also for evaluation and marketing purposes – were those which has in place a broader digital strategy for their organisation as a whole. It also pointed to a digital skills gap in the sector, which we hope that the recently announced Building Digital Capacity in the Arts programme partnership between the Arts Council and the BBC will go some way to addressing.