Youth Music goes under the spotlight at national seminar

A hundred of Scotland’s leading specialists and practitioners in music and education will come together on Saturday 12^th June at a conference designed to promote wider participation in youth music through developing better working relationships between local authorities and the informal music sector.

The National Youth Music Initiative Seminar, organised by the Scottish Arts Council, will take place at the University of Stirling and will report on the progress of the Youth Music Initiative since the Scottish Executive announced an extra £17.5 million funding last year to assist young people’s participation in music.

The Youth Music Initiative was founded on ‘What’s Going On? – a national audit of youth music in Scotland’, which was a joint commission by the Scottish Arts Council, Youth Music and the Musicians Union.  The Initiative aims to nurture musical talent in Scotland’s young people and to increase levels of participation and access to a wide range of musical styles and activities such as learning an instrument, composition, improvisation, recording and DJ-ing.

The seminar will outline to those working in and out of schools and formal education how the formation of a Youth Music Strategy will help achieve a new approach in music education in Scotland and will focus on developing that strategy for wider consultation.

Frank McAveety, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport will introduce the seminar while keynote speakers at the event will include David Price, Youth Music Initiative; Margaret Martin Griffiths, Specialist Advisor for Music in Ofsted; Paul Rissman, Composer and Freelance Music Animateur; and Christina Coker, Chief Executive of Youth Music.

Nod Knowles, Head of Music at the Scottish Arts Council, says: “The Scottish Executive’s injection of additional funding for youth music in Scotland represented a historic opportunity to radically improve the provision of music-making for young people.  Already we have seen great successes from local authorities who have used the additional

funding creatively and flexibly by working in partnership with a number of different music providers to increase levels of young peoples’ participation in a wide range of music projects.

Some of the projects developed as part of the Youth Music Initiative have included:

• The appointment of a world music officer in the Borders to link in with local voluntary organisations to provide folk, jazz and world music performances and events for young people.
• The development of a partnership between Shetland String Ensembles and the Edinburgh Academy to enhance tuition of string instruments in order to develop a Shetland Youth Orchestra.
• Aberdeenshire Council working with Aberdeen University to develop ‘Sonic Postcards’, a unique and innovative composition project enabling pupils to explore and compare their local sound environments by exchanging ‘sound’ postcards with other international schools via the internet.
• West Lothian Council working alongside local cultural co-ordinators to provide schools with performances in African drumming, samba and zheng.

The seminar will include presentations and workshops, which will centre on the themes of ‘Participation, Partnership and Progression’ and hopes to encourage wider participation in the Initiative through local authorities developing more effective relationships with those organisations and individuals involved in the music education sector, such as community musicians and workshops or summer school projects such as the Feisean.

There will also be plenty of live music from Scotland’s young musicians, demonstrating the wealth of talent that already exists.  These will include performances by the National Children’s Orchestra Scotland as well as from accordion player Angus Lyon and fiddler, Ruaridh Campbell from Live Music Now! who will be performing tracks from their album, Simple Tricks.

Frank McAveety MSP, Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport said:

'Every child should have the opportunity to play a musical instrument.  This seminar, for those involved in the implementation of the initiative, provides an excellent opportunity for delegates to be updated on developments and to link with each other and share new ideas and best practice.'

Nod Knowles continues: “What we hope to achieve through this seminar is to share success stories and demonstrate areas of best practice.  Every child and young person in Scotland should be entitled to learn about and participate in all kinds of music regardless of where they live and to do this most effectively, a network of provision should be made in partnership by local authorities as well as by independent groups involved in the music education sector.”

Notes to editors

• The Scottish Arts Council champions and sustains the arts for Scotland, investing over £60 million from Scottish Executive and National Lottery funding to support and develop artistic excellence and creativity through Scotland. Further information is available on our website: Copies of ‘What’s Going On? – a national audit of youth music in Scotland’ are available from the Scottish Arts Council website at: www.scottisharts.org.uk/1/information/publications/music.aspx.  
• The £17.5 million funding announced by the First Minister is available over three years and distributed by the Scottish Arts Council to local authorities and to organisations within the music education sector. A copy for the application form for funds for the informal sector (ie, Non Local Authority) can be downloaded from our website, www.scottisharts.org.uk.
• A key target for the Initiative is one year’s free access to music tuition for all pupils by primary 6 as well as increasing participation in all kinds of musical involvement with all ages of young people.

Contact email(s)

neil.mcinnes@scottisharts.org.uk

Issued by: Scottish Arts Council