Keith Stubbs -
You “have never had it so good”.
So thought Harold Macmillan, the Conservative Prime Minister in 1957. Many of us might soon be thinking the same about the last 13 years of Labour government when the full extent of the cuts is revealed under the new Liberal Democrat Conservative Coalition. If you’ve been following Dick Hallam’s TM blog you will know just how important it is to report and demonstrate the benefits that unprecedented funding increases have brought to the music education sector. We have just one more year of the Music Standards Fund, for example to demonstrate how essential this funding is to the ongoing success of music education across the country.
But I notice that whilst schools have been protected from the expected 25% cuts recently announced, DCMS and therefore Arts Council have not! For the past decade, most of my work in music education has been through the orchestral sector, and one of the great challenges to this work has been the lack of joined up thinking between the two government departments that are involved - DCSF, now DfE and DCMS. When Education Minister, David Milliband was responsible for bringing these two departments together for talks. The result was the Music Manifesto, generally accepted now as having a major influence on a number of important initiatives including the Sing Up campaign and much of the new and additional funding. Recall, for example the £332m announcement in November 2007! Sadly, I don’t see too much collaboration between these departments now.
There are 65 orchestral members of the Association of British Orchestras (ABO) in the UK and all of them maintain a programme of education and outreach work in schools and the community. The larger symphony orchestras make a very considerable investment in this work. The commitment to maintaining this programme is undoubtedly still there, but I wonder how the cuts imposed on Arts Council England, for example (£19m) will impact on orchestral education projects?
Whilst shadow arts minister, Jeremy Hunt gave a plenary speech to the ABO conference that was almost entirely devoted to education. Now in government, it will be interesting to see if he will keep that commitment to enable the working relationship between schools and professional orchestras and other arts companies to survive and develop.
Earlier this year the ABO launched “A Platform for Success: A Five Year Vision for Orchestras” in which they call on government to value orchestras, fund wisely, legislate supportively, and most importantly, support music education. Their “Live the Experience: concerts given by ABO orchestras in England for school children and young people” published in August 2009 showed that around half the children in school have the opportunity to experience live orchestral music as part of their school experience. And most recently, “Unlocking Potential - Education and the Orchestra” demonstrates the huge programme of work that is supporting the education sector throughout the UK.
This leads me to ask two questions. Are your students able to benefit from this resource and if they are can you do more to shout about the benefits that it brings? Because if we don’t do our utmost to say how important this work is it may be taken away from us!
Keith Stubbs
Reference: www.abo.org.uk
