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Four first steps: Lobbying and advocacy for music and arts organisations

WHAT IS LOBBYING AND ADVOCACY?  Advocacy in the political sense means creating awareness of an issue in order to influence public policy and funding decisions. The methods you use can be wide-ranging, from communications and media campaigns, to public speaking; from commissioning and publishing research to conducting polls.  Lobbying is a type of advocacy that…

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Facing up to cuts: the first crowd-funded music service in Wales?

This article was first published in Music Teacher magazine, November 2014. Download the article. Anita Holford reports on the state of play for music services in Wales, and how one music service has faced the challenges of local authority cuts head on. Being a music teacher isn’t easy at the moment, but if you’re working…

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Campaigning for music education?

I read about this a while ago but it’s in the news again – U2 have made a massive investment in supporting music education in Ireland. They’re funding instruments and tuition for young people, through Music Generation, a five year programme that happens locally within a national framework. Their strapline is ‘making music education happen’.…

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Apocalypse now for music education in Wales and England?

Music education in many places in Wales is in a dreadful state, and the situation doesn’t seem likely to improve any time soon. The Welsh Assembly Government’s long-awaited music education review was published six months ago now, and yet very little’s happened since. You can read more about this in my article (Music education in…

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Wales: a land with less music?

Amid all the discussion and debate about the review of music education in England, there was also a review here in Wales. It was published, somewhat quietly, by Welsh Assembly Government some months ago – see my previous post, Wales’ music education review. I spoke to two of the people who were behind the original…

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Wales’ music education review – it’s all gone quiet over here

I’m really baffled that no-one’s reporting or blogging about the Welsh Assembly Government’s review of music education. As far as I can see there was no official press release, there have been no reports in the main newspapers in Wales, and I’ve not found anything online except for a few short articles in the TES…

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Wales’ music education review – in short

Here’s a very short summary of the recommendations of the Review of Music Education for 3-19 year olds, and the Welsh Assembly Government’s response. For the full documents see the Written statement – review of music education for 3-19 year olds. Although the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) has accepted the vision contained in the report,…

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