AH: Today I’m speaking with the team behind a new guide to help support music with autistic young people in autism resource bases, and they are Beth Pickard, a music therapist and lecturer at the University of South Wales; Alex Lupo, an autistic musician, community musician, and music therapist, who’s also creative lead and trainer at Live Music Now; and Karen Irwin, strategic director, children and young people at Live Music Now. So the guide was part of an action research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the University of Southampton Centre for Music and Social Justice, and I’ll let them tell you a little bit more about that. So, welcome, Beth, Alex, and Karen. It’s lovely to see you again following the launch of the guide a few weeks ago in Cardiff.
AL: Thanks, Anita.
BP: Thanks very much.
KI: Yeah, thanks very much, Anita, for having us.
AH: Oh, you’re really welcome. You’ve been doing a lot of communications around this project, including some lovely presentations at various conferences and webinars. So for this podcast, I don’t want to repeat that exactly, but instead I’ll include links in the show notes, or you can go direct to Live Music Now’s website and search for Autism Resource Basis Programme, where you’ll find a beautifully illustrated guide, a film, a podcast, as well as resources for policymakers and head teachers. So to kick off, can you give listeners a brief headline picture of this project? What an autism resource base is, what gap you found when you looked at music provision in them, and what you set out to do about it.
AL: Yeah, so an autism resource base typically describes specialist provision for autistic learners located within a mainstream setting. Both primary and secondary, although we did find that they’re possibly more prevalent in primary settings, and the term autism resource base is one of several terms that’s used to describe this kind of specialist provision, and it does differ across the country. But we have, on the whole, stuck with that term, but acknowledge that that terminology can differ region to region.
AH: Thank you.
BP: And in terms of the gap that we were looking to kind of address, there had been quite extensive pilot work that I anticipate we might say a bit more about in a few minutes, which Alex had led with Live Music Now, and through that work, it had come to light that at some settings, pupils attending these specialist classes located within mainstream schools were potentially excluded from the richness of musical opportunities which might be available to pupils attending the mainstream classes. And the research funding that we were applying for was specifically looking to address a social justice issue in music education, and we felt that this was a really good fit for this particular focus.
AH: Excellent, thank you. So, how did you address that? What did the project actually involve, and over what time period?
KI: So, we had 12 months to deliver our project without any wriggle room at all. So, it was quite a feat to get that done, and we were also pretty ambitious in what we wanted to do with that time, because it was such an amazing opportunity to work intensively with an expert researcher like Beth and with Alex on board as our sort of non-academic researcher. So we split the project up into four phases. The first phase looked at the current landscape, and that included doing a literature review undertaken by Beth to see what research was out there about music making within specialist spaces in mainstream classrooms, of which there wasn’t very much and none in the UK. We also did an online survey out to resource spaces across the UK. That in itself was very challenging because there was no sort of central list. Each area has a different way of dealing with specialist provision. So we were able to sort of I think we there was over 2000 potential venues. We got about 113 responses. Then the second phase was more around public engagement and focus groups, so learning from other people working in the sector. So we had sessions with music education specialists, some of whom were autistic. We met with autistic musicians, bringing their lived experience to the discussions. We also undertook a creative songwriting project with autistic children in a special school, and we had some events in person in Northern Ireland, meeting with parents and teachers and people from the education authority, and online sessions as well. So gathering up information and views and wonderful advice from people who had a connection to this area of work. Phase three was our delivery of two 10-week projects in primary schools, one in Northern Ireland and one in South Wales, and that was delivered by Alex and our music specialist in Northern Ireland, Gary Day, plus Live Music Now musicians working very closely with school staff, and we had Beth and another research assistant, Alex Lucas, in those sessions observing, taking notes, and then doing follow-up interviews with pupils, with staff, with parents, and with musicians. And then the final phase of the project, which we’ve just sort of coming to the close of, was basically bringing all the information and evidence together. So that’s as you said, we’ve produced our guide, our film. We’ve done policy briefings, and sharing that learning as widely as possible.
AH: Thank you. It sounds to me like it was just such a really well constructed, well thought through project, and to deliver it in a year is pretty amazing. So the 10 weeks of action research in those two schools in Wales and Northern Ireland that built on a previous three years of work in schools in Somerset, Liverpool, and Harrow, which was funded by Youth Music. So from those three years and this most recent year, that’s a substantial amount of learning directly from autistic children. So what would you say are the key things you learned from them about what they needed and about their kind of strengths and potential?
AL: From my perspective, the word that you just used, strength, I think is really important. So, one of the really key things about what we’ve learned is the importance of taking a strength-based approach and framing everything in that way. So I guess that is learning directly from the young people because we were able to be alongside them as they explored those strengths and to explore that within a system which is heavily weighted towards deficit-based language, a deficit-based understanding, everything to do with the assessment process is very kind of heavy in terms of deficit-based language, and some of the ways in which we understand how to support young autistic people is very much kind of sits in that world as well. So, I think experiencing and being alongside young people as they explore those strengths has been hugely important in terms of the learning from this work, I think. Yeah, for me, that’s big.
BP: I think something else that really struck me. I think because, like you said, the design of our project, there were lots of different elements, and the 10 week residencies were really the practice based element, and there was such a lot of work went into them, but also kind of anticipation to reach that point, you know, lots of that desk-based research was all building up to what mattered was the delivery with the children, young people, and I just it really stayed with me the importance of trusting the music. I think there were lots of conversations leading up to and arranging and planning the residencies, and you know conversations with different stakeholders, with teachers and settings, and there was some reservation. And you know, in the data we collected later on, some of the teachers very generously shared, very openly and honestly, that they were really nervous and scared. What will happen if we relinquish some control and allow more freedom, flexibility, creativity, etc. And of course, I knew and I fully believed that these young people would thrive in music. I know that to be true, and I knew that would be the case. But still, to have that conviction and to really trust the music and to trust the young people as well, and you know that was the thread that ran through our project. But it just really affirmed for me and reminded me to trust in the young people’s potential and to trust that all the things that we know are possible in music will happen.
AH: Thank you. We’ll talk a little bit more about that because you took that learning and created it into a tool or a way of approaching music making with young people, which could be useful for many different music educators. But what moment from the residencies is there a specific pupil or a specific experience with some pupils that has stayed with any of you?
AL: There are many, from my perspective. One of the things that happened in the South Wales residency that I was leading alongside a team of brilliant Live Music Now musicians, Daisy and Megan, both based in South Wales, was quite a lot of sort of spontaneous or improvised songwriting happened during that project, and that wasn’t necessarily, what we set out to do, but based on young people’s interests and the things that they were letting us know they wanted to be able to explore in the sessions, it very sort of naturally occurred that we were doing quite a lot of spontaneous songwriting. And it was the breadth of interests that were reflected in that, I think, was the thing that surprised me, and so there are lots that I could talk about, but one that we have mentioned actually in the resource, but also in other on other platforms when we’ve been talking about this work recently. But it did really stick with me, was a pupil in one of the two groups that we worked with in South Wales, and it wasn’t initially clear, but after several sessions, it emerged that her absorbing interest was fire alarms, and this was a school where the fire alarm went off quite frequently. And for the majority of the young people in the class, that was very dysregulating, actually. And it would be the thing that may make the rest of the day very, very difficult. You know, it’s a big sensory experience, and there’s a lot of change, and it’s very sudden, and there’s no warning. For her, everything about the phenomena of fire alarms was deeply sort of absorbing and was one of the most exciting moments of the day. I think for her when the when the fire alarm might go off and it was once that knowledge had entered the space and we were aware of it that was something that so clearly unlocked her engagement and she became then deeply immersed in the music making alongside everybody else, which was really exciting, and it was, in a way, simply that we’d acknowledged that deep interest and that absorbing interest for her, and she felt seen, I hope, and validated, I hope. And was a really clear entry point. But there were so many examples like that of deeply absorbing interests that were reflected iin this songwriting, and it really did differ greatly from young person to young person.
BP: There was another example in Northern Ireland, which maybe offers a different perspective as well. And we only know this because of the generosity of one of the parents who joined us for a focus group and felt moved to share with us. And I should say that came about because of some of the public engagement activities we did in phase two, some parents let us know that they felt they had a lot of insight to contribute and would welcome becoming involved. So that was something that evolved as the project unfolded in response to the people we engaged with. But yeah, a parent generously attended our focus group and shared with us that because of the music project, their daughter had come to understand the concept of turn taking for the first time, so taking turns on a drum was how that had begun for them. And he shared that their family found it quite difficult to spend much time in the community, and their daughter often became quite dysregulated and just found it difficult to understand some of the kind of social conventions that happen when you’re out and about, and specifically, he shared that waiting in line in a shop is a really difficult experience for her because she doesn’t have an understanding of why anyone has to wait when you know that might not be what they want to do. And he shared that actually he was able to transfer her learning about taking turns on a drum to taking turns waiting in line in a shop, and he suggested that that had been quite transformative for their family, and that they’re now able to spend more sustained time in their community as a family. So, we just felt that was a really powerful example of something that was beyond the life of the project in some ways, and just really grateful that that parent chose to let us know that because that was something that we might not have understood. And also interestingly, we interviewed the teachers who had been present in the sessions and obviously also know the children and young people very well. And this young person’s class teacher actually said he’d had really high hopes for what the project might be like for her, and at the end, he actually, not that he was disappointed, but he felt he hadn’t really observed a significant impact on her. He hadn’t noticed that she had been deeply impacted, and yet her parent was able to tell us that actually the impact was significant, but maybe in a kind of another aspect of her experience.
AH: Oh, that’s brilliant you had parents’ feedback because we so often aren’t able to get that, and that triangulated viewpoint from perspectives of a young person or the people around them is so rich and valuable. And just wanted to pick up on the absorbing interest thing. Did you feel, Alex, that that was a key to unlocking musical potential, and that’s often overlooked, maybe.
AL: Yeah, I think so. It sits really firmly within one of the eight values that we’ve been working with on this project, and that’s very much part of this output. But just simply acknowledging the deeply important role that absorbing interests play in the lives of autistic people, and that can look and feel really, really different with different individuals, for sure. But it, you’re absolutely right. It really feels like a key and really important bridge for connection between people. And I think one thing that’s really clear to me is that whilst it’s really important to acknowledge young people’s interests, what’s really important and the kind of mechanism for getting there with that is first notice or try to understand where that interest sits, and then go meet that young person at that point. As opposed to constructing something else or expecting a young person to come to you, which might be the more dominant way that we think about music education sometimes. So, yeah, deeply absorbing interests have been a really important part of this work. For me, often one of the most surprising because you can’t imagine what that might be with anybody, and you know they genuinely did range from you know the anecdote that I told a moment ago about fire alarms right the way through to abandoned bunkers in tunnels in fields, or really popular internet memes, or characters from YouTube, or perhaps some of the things that we might more commonly think about in terms of absorbing interest for young people, particularly things like Disney or trains or vehicles or music itself. You know, it really does differ.
KI: In one of the pilot projects, one of the classes that we’ve worked with, they absolutely loved the theme tune from Coronation Street, and that became sort of the focal point for the music making. You know, for the whole project.
AH: Amazing! Oh my goodness! I mean that all speaks to the good practice in community music, doesn’t it? That we talk a lot about listening and observing, really having your antennae out for what those young people respond to, and then that whole thing about relationship building and being interested in their musical interests or their general interests – it kind of unlocks a young person, doesn’t it, when you’re interested in them, and that’s the same for every young person, isn’t it, really?
AL: Yeah.
AH: So the practical result is a guide. It’s such a brilliant guide for people using music in autism resource bases. But really, we talked about the fact that it could be useful to anyone working with autistic pupils, and in fact, to anyone working with young people through music, because there’s just so much that’s simply about best practice in music making with people. And one aspect that I think is really interested is this universal design for learning approach and the strengths-based principles that underpin it. Can you just tell us briefly a little bit about that.
BP: Yeah, I think Alex and I have had the pleasure to connect across several projects, and I think it’s something that we’ve talked about for many years as a fundamental pillar of inclusive practice. So, universal design is a concept that comes from architecture, and it’s the idea of anticipating difference and diversity. So, if you were designing a building and you wanted it to be successful and used for 100 years. Then you couldn’t necessarily know what the specific needs of users in 100 years would be. So you design out as many barriers as possible, and that idea has been transferred across into teaching and learning practices. So in practice, I think it’s about providing as many entry points and as many ways in and as many ways of participating as possible. But I also think it marries very closely with that notion of a strength-based philosophy because what I really value about universal design is not just the practical application of it, but the philosophical stance that diversity is necessary and valuable and rich, and I think that could be such a shift. And certainly in any training that I’ve delivered, introducing the idea to people that actually we should plan for diversity, we should encourage diverse ways of being. And for some people, I think just having the experience of accessing something in a more comfortable and confident way for the first time, and it’s you know there’s a spectrum, isn’t it? For some people, that’s an absolute necessity. For other people, it’s a preference or it’s a better way of doing something. And so I think, like you said, it offers, it could be transformative for people who’ve been excluded, but it could also enhance access for everyone as well.
AH: Great, thank you. And in this guide, people will find tools that will help them translate that into practice in their work. It’s a brilliant guide in so many ways. First of all, it looks beautiful. Thank you to Emily, the illustrator, but also you, as a team, have worked really, really hard to distil what you’ve learned into a set of tools that people can use and that are actually quite easy for people to take on board. So there’s a set of core values. There’s a simple four-part framework called the Arc, which could be used for a session or it could be used for a programme. And then you’ve given different examples of what that looks like in practice, what equipment and resources you might use at different budget levels. So, can you tell me briefly about the core values and the Arc?
AL: Certainly. So, we’re working with this core set of values. So, kind of run over them quickly, I guess. So, and actually, before I talk about these, it’s worth saying that we practically found these values very useful when we’re thinking about the practice. So when we’re thinking about planning, when you’re in the practice itself, so being able to use these values reflexively at the moment, but then also be able to use them as a tool for reflection. So it felt quite neat to have this package of eight values, and actually working from a values-based perspective felt like the right way to think about the work because it reminds us of what’s important about the work without necessarily prescribing what you do in the work. So always making sure that we’re checking in with these values really. So we’re working with the idea of safety, so making sure that people feel safe and supported in their relationships, but then also in their sensory experience. And we acknowledge the important role that safety plays in everybody’s existence, and absolutely all children and young people’s existence. But particularly for autistic people, I think safety plays a key role in how people feel they’re able to access education, and that’s one of the significant barriers I think for a lot of autistic children and young people, especially that are in mainstream education, and of course there are a lot. So we follow safety with acceptance. So really, just simply valuing young people as they are, how they show up to a session, authentic behaviours, ways of participating, ways of expressing themselves. That could mean the music they choose to explore in a session, or the interest that they bring, or actually, literally, how they express themselves in a session. So we value young people turning up and moving their body instead of exploring an instrument or participating, perhaps outside of the activity or certain kind of physically located elsewhere in the room, but actually noticing those nuanced moments where they might move over, touch an instrument, pay attention to what’s happening, and acknowledging that that’s an important part of us accepting them, but also how they might be establishing safety too. So then we move on to being people-led, so centring young people’s voices and choices, which feels like a very clear part of quite traditional good community music practice, I guess. Then on to interest-driven, and we’ve talked about that quite a bit over the last few minutes. But really, treating those absorbing interests as a meaningful point of connection. And whilst this isn’t in our values explicitly, or at least it’s not named in the values, something that we’ve been really interested in during the research is the concept of flow in the autistic experience, and really acknowledging that absorbing interests can be a very direct route to flow for a lot of people. Then value five would be being co-created, so enabling shared ownership of the music, working alongside young people, not behind of or in front of, and then balance, meaning holding predictability and flexibility together at the same time. So acknowledging the importance of structure and routine and predictability in autistic people’s lives, but also knowing that inherently the creative process is full of surprises, and we’re following our curiosity and we’re exploring together, and that can’t necessarily be prescribed in that same way. But knowing that we need to somehow hold a balance between those two things. And then being playful, so encouraging curiosity really through creative music making, which in terms of the music that we would explore, that would often be the sort of dominant way in which we’d explore music together. And then finally valuing the holistic nature of the way that we work. So valuing that there are musical outcomes and wider benefits alike. So outcomes that are within and beyond the music. So the personal outcomes, the social outcomes, etc. So those are our eight values.
AH: And then, would you like to also just briefly tell listeners about the Arc, how that fits in?
AL: Yeah, I can do that as well. So it’s relatively simple, and I think this is one of the ways in which we’re able to balance predictability and freedom is thinking about what a session might look like and acknowledging that there are certain conditions that need to be in place in order to kind of move on. So we might start with safety, and it’s not a coincidence that safety is the first value, but it’s also the first part of the session arc as well. So always making sure there’s a calm and predictable routine, helping young people feel safe and prepared to take part, arrive in the space, and whatever that might look like. And you know that actually might start before they even come into the session, that might be to do with how we communicate what’s going to happen in the session, whether we use a visual reference or a visual guide for the session. What’s happening in the room? How’s the room set up? Have we considered all those kind of sensory aspects? What’s the lighting like? Is there other sound that’s happening in the space? Is it a visually very busy space? Is it a known space? Is it an unknown space? But then, on top of that, we might think about there being something sort of clearly predictable, which definitely over a few sessions would build up to feel like a routine. So it could be a hello song or a piece of music that feels familiar, or an activity. So starting in safety, and then moving into opportunities to connect. But I also think of this as a bridge of connection between establishing safety and then moving on to the third part of the session arc, which is exploration. So that creative music making, that chance for us to explore, absolutely make music on young people’s terms. So making music in a way that is relevant and engaging and interesting for them, but making sure that that’s a chance for us to explore and find out what it feels like to hold an instrument in your hand, or where one of our musicians in Northern Ireland that took part in the residency described it really nicely, as initially, you might be working alongside a young person who’s really trying to work out where the edges are. You know, how high can I play? How low can I play? How loud can I play? How quietly can I play? And really sort of firmly establishing that, which is a really natural way in which we would explore something new, isn’t it? So really valuing that. Then finally moving into ending well, so having a predictable close. Again, that might be a piece of music or a song that’s signalling that we’ve come to the end of the session. For some groups, that might be more about finding a time to transition out of active music making and into receptive music making, so that might be a chance to listen to a piece of music. It might be where we very deliberately take the energy of the session into a different place, so things become perhaps quieter, slower, calmer. If we’re thinking about those kind of musical elements. But otherwise, so safety, connection, exploration, and ending well is the idea of how we might be able to structure a session. But as you mentioned earlier on, what’s quite neat about it, you can also think about that unfolding over a different period of time. So that might unfold over 10 weeks. That might unfold over an academic year. And crucially, we also must hold space for the fact that different young people will move through that in different ways and at different times. So I can absolutely think of examples of young people who perhaps spent some time cycling between safety and connection, safety and connection, safety and connection, safety and connection, and then actually after a number of weeks finding themselves in a place where exploration felt possible. Because of course we can’t expect anybody to engage in creative, free-flowing thought unless their nervous system feels safe, unless they feel regulated, unless they feel held and acknowledged and connected in that way. So, it feels like quite a neat way to think about it, because from a practitioner’s point of view, it gives us something very clear to work with alongside the values, and I think that’s true for non-specialists as well because none of those are explicitly musical. They’re all ways of us imagining how a space is held and how people will experience their time in that space. So yeah, that’s how that works.
AH: Thank you. It’s so useful because I think it’s really easy to remember and really easy to apply. Just one thing before we move on to more strategic questions. As I was listening, I was thinking for some music educators. So this can be used by non-species teachers who are in the resource space, but also I guess the intention is for it to be used by musicians and music educators from hubs, music services, etc. But while I was listening to you talking, I was thinking this may sound a little bit too much like community music for people, and they might just be thinking, “Yeah, but that’s not how I can do it in my system, in the way that I work. And I just wondered if you have any words of encouragement for somebody who feels, well, I’m not a community musician. That just sounds like community music. I’m a music educator.
BP: We were conscious of that, and I think it’s important to name that. We did compile a document which you can access alongside the toolkit, where we’ve mapped aspects of the values and the Arc that we just talked about against the music curricula for Wales, England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, as well as the sounds of intent model. So we hope that goes some way to demonstrate that it’s possible to hold both of those ideas in mind. I guess I might also say that autistic children and young people, every day have to adjust and inhabit a space that is not designed for them, and adhere to norms that aren’t comfortable or helpful to them, and I think it can be really healthy for practitioners to step outside of their typical ways of doing things. Not to say, you know, that anyone should abandon what works for them and what is safe and helpful to them. But equally, there could be real creativity in experiencing something gently different, or just taking a moment to imagine, well, if this young person is having to adapt their authentic way of being every day, how might it be for me to adapt my practice and to step into that just for a moment? And I really I appreciate that might not be the first thing practitioners want to do when they’re learning about this work, but I just you know offer that as a thought. That’s what we’re asking young people to do every single day.
AH: Oh, that’s really great, Beth. That’s a really great thought. What are the next steps for Live Music Now after the four years of funding, essentially for this programme? How will you, as an organisation, continue the legacy?
KI: There’s still lots and lots to do to raise the visibility of specialist provision within the music education sector. And as an organisation that’s an arts charity, we’re very committed to continuing to work on the programme, at least over the next five, even 10 years. Feels so such important work. One of the first things that we’re doing is developing a training offer for schools, music services, and music hubs. And Alex has been developing that over the last month or so, and that will be ready to launch in the autumn term. We’re really hoping that that will enable us to share our strength-based approach to this work with music specialists and also with classroom staff as well. So we’ve got different – it’s like a menu of different types of training that will include a quick introduction and then more of a deep dive as well. And then there’ll be other training offers as well from Live Music Now, providing sort of mentoring potentially, or music services and music hubs, working alongside music tutors. Also, our musician in residence programmes continuing to deliver those, working very closely with classroom staff or with music service tutors as well to develop the practice and share the approach. And then, in terms of like the next steps. We’ve talked about this, I suppose Musical Connections was very much focused on primary schools, and that’s where our two projects took place in primary settings. I think we’ve all acknowledged that it looks pretty different in secondary settings. In our pilot work funded by Youth Music, we did work in some secondary settings. We saw some really wonderful practice and responses from young people, but it would be, I think, you know, it requires additional research and building an evidence base for that. So we’d hope to apply for further research funding, potentially from the AHRC, look into that. And then more generally, potentially looking at how this approach, this sort of strength-based values approach, could be applied in, say, a mainstream classroom where there is a lot of diverse learning styles and different needs across the class, and what could be learned from our approach working in these smaller settings. What would that look like if it was applied within a larger class setting as well? We’re interested in those sort of two aspects of research, developing it further. But as ever, you know the funding, I mean that that’s why the AHRC the Spoke funding through the University of Southampton was so valuable because it really helped us to develop the practice to you know to test it and to produce very tangible resources and outputs that can be used more widely across the sector. So yes, we need to see where we can find funding to continue the research.
AH: Oh, it sounds fascinating. And so, finally, what are your hopes in terms of the strategic aims of this piece of work? Because we haven’t even spoken about the fact that you were supported by policy experts in the University of Southampton around this. So, what are your hopes for that policy aspect of things, and how can perhaps listeners help with that?
AL: I’d like to imagine that we could have a very tangible impact around a lot of the new resource bases that are being, or inclusion bases that are being set up nationally. That wasn’t necessarily on our radar when we first started this research. That’s quite interesting to us because partway through the research, then the [Westminster] government announced a significant overhaul to the SEND system, and we’re very confident that this approach would provide any new setting with a really solid set of tools that could help them to understand better the young people that they’re supporting, and actually create a framework for support that was very much based around the needs and interests of young people, and was had a strength-based approach. So I’d like to imagine, it’s quite a big wish I guess, but I’d like to imagine that we could have an impact on how people consider the role of music and the role of a strength-based pupil-led approach to learning. Actually, generally, I think that would be hugely positive.
BP: And following on from that, we were careful to ensure that on all three of the policy briefings that we wrote, is a clear recommendation on each that autistic people should be at the centre of this discourse, and I hope that that’s something that might come out of this. So, as you mentioned, we’ve learned from a large number of autistic children and young people. We intentionally collaborated with a number of autistic professionals throughout the different phases of the research, and we’re very grateful to our steering group of autistic musicians who significantly shape the work and the outcomes from it. And so I hope in many ways that that key learning is to involve and empower autistic people to direct this work moving forward. And that could it be in lots of ways, even if as simple as a music educator who’s got an autistic pupil in their class and not sure what to do next, to ask an autistic person. You know that could be a really relatively small but significantly impactful decision, rather than opening an older book which comes from a very different position to just ensure that autistic people are a core and central part of this conversation moving forward.
AH: Thank you, and also just to note that you do have briefings for policymakers and decision makers on the website. So one way listeners can help is by having a look at them, downloading them, and sharing them with decision makers that they know in education and policy. And another, finally, in a sense, music education hubs and music services, and individual music educators obviously play a key role in working with schools to create the change you want to see for autistic pupils. What would be your message to each of them?
KI: My message would be to say to make sure that resource provisions are thought about when planning music education and music provision, whether that’s a school that has resource provision, you know, what does music look like in in those specialist classes? Or for a music hub, do you know the schools that have got resource provision and how are you supporting and connecting with them? So it’s just anything that we can do to raise visibility of resource provision within the music education system is going to be a positive.
AH: Thank you, Karen. And we’ve come to the end I’m afraid. I could talk for ages about this because it’s just been fascinating watching the progress of this project through the last year. So thank you so much, Beth, Alex, and Karen for joining me today. There’s obviously a lot that you’ve got planned, a lot of hopes for the future. I hope the next stage, the training programme, goes really well, and I hope that music educators beat a path to your door for that training because that’s going to be incredible. Yeah, so thank you very much.
AL: Thanks, Anita.
BP: Thank you. KI: Thanks very much.
KI: Thanks very much.