Arts Council England has just published its new 10-year vision. So why is that relevant to you if you don’t get funding, or if you’re in one of the other nations of the UK? Our Chief Executive Barbara Eifler explains…
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It’s not as glamorous as it sounds, and often involves investing a lot of time before results become tangible… so what does it look like, and what can it do for you?
Here’s a selection of what we’ve been up to.
Learn To Play Day, organised by the charity Music for All, is a free, nationwide initiative to get people of all ages and abilities playing a musical instrument. This year’s event will take place on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March.
The event sees music shops, groups, teachers, venues and schools throughout the UK partner with leading musical instrument brands to offer thousands of free music lessons across the weekend.
Singers in community choirs across the country can testify to the feel-good nature of raising their voices together. One of these is the Big Noise Chorus, which at the end of 2019, celebrated a landmark ten years of singing together with a huge concert involving over 450 singers at Exeter Cathedral. Alto singer and volunteer, Jo Toffolo, tells us more.
For the first time, government proposals to overhaul business rates will include rates for grassroots music venues.
Among a raft of other legislative proposals in the Queen's Speech, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new government unveiled that it will conduct a fundamental review of business rates.
I can get very miserable, especially when it’s dark in the morning, dark in the afternoon, and grey and rainy in between. The house is a mess, there’s been yet another invasion of the teenage pizza snatchers in the kitchen, the washing piles up and Christmas is looming – and once again no cards have been written and only the briefest of brief investigations of various online shops has taken place, ahead of panic-ordering on the day of the last delivery deadline.
It must be December!
First opened on 1 August, the consultation has now been extended twice and will finally close on 31 December – so there’s still time if you want to make a submission.
What is it all about?
When you perform or present music in copyright in public, royalties are due to the creator(s) of that musical work. PRS for Music collect this money on behalf of creators who are their members and then distribute it to them. Sometimes they use ‘agents’ to do this for them, and Making Music is one such, so groups who perform in unlicensed venues can pay PRS through us.
Dr Daisy Fancourt introduces the first World Health Organisation report on the evidence base for arts and health interventions.
Making Music is delighted to announce the appointment of Stephen McNally as its first Northern Ireland Manager.
Based in Mid Ulster, McNally will support Making Music member groups across Northern Ireland and undertake campaigning and advocacy for members and the Northern Irish leisure-time music community in general.
Barbara Eifler, Making Music Chief Executive, comments:
In February 2019, Surrey County Council Cabinet finally agreed that the charity, NewSPAL (New Surrey Performing Arts Library), would be allowed to take on and run one of the largest music and drama collections in the country, numbering over 200,000 individual items.
Until the new facility in Woking is ready, the collection is still available through the council in Ewell Library – see www.newspal.org.uk for details.