About
Hertfordshire Music Service (HMS), one of the 13 partners in the Alliance for a Musically Inclusive England, ran a national musical inclusion programme for music services called Changing Tracks. The team were keen to make better use of communications to share the learning from their programme with music services and leads of music education hubs, and raise their profile in the sector.
HMS is a team within the Children’s Services Department of Hertfordshire County Council and its Changing Tracks programme was funded by Youth Music.
How I helped
Initially, Anita was contracted to help the three strategic/programme leads (Michael Davidson, Head of Rock, Family & Community Music at HMS; Nick Denham, Head of Inclusion at HMS and Lyndall Rosewarne, freelance strategic lead for the programme) to devise a communications strategy.
Anita was then contracted to work with the team – now including music leader Ije Amaechi, and project officer Rory Davidson – for a further four years, working one day a week to support the delivery of the strategy and oversee a complete rebrand and the launch of a new website.
The work has covered working as part of the team to develop the strategy and plan for the programme, based on feedback and insights from the sector; and creating a range of multi-media learning content and resources, including films, infographics, thought-leader articles, and reports from working groups.
Results have included:
- Website – a 400% increase in web visitors
- Twitter – a 37% increase in followers and 75% increase in engagement
- Enews – a 24% increase in subscribers; 10% increase in opens and 11% increase in click-throughs
A Google Data Studio dashboard provided an easy way for the team to monitor the impact of communications including conversion rates for goals (downloads, video plays, reading blogs to 75% depth, staying onsite for 15 minutes plus).
The work has helped to share the learning from the programme and help music service teams to embed equality, diversity and inclusion throughout their organisational culture, strategy and practices.
