Guidance

Across the country, there are thousands of leisure-time music groups that exist for distinct reasons and appeal to different people. This is a great thing, but it means that you need to able to clearly describe who your group is and what it does so that people know what to expect when they interact with you. This resource will cover how and why to produce a ‘definition statement’ for your music group. 

In this recording of our webinar (original event 28 January 2025), we talked about process of commissioning new music as a leisure-time music group, and the challenges and benefits that it brings.

Commissioning a new piece of music can be a daunting process for a leisure-time music group, and it can be equally daunting for a music creator to approach a group to discuss collaborating. 

Our sixth meeting in our Climate Network series (original event 2 December 2024) discussed some of the latest success stories from our member groups who have implemented more sustainable practices into the ways they work.

The speakers for this event were:

Your number one question: how do I find new members for my group, and how do I keep them?

In November, our CEO Barbara Eifler was invited to do a Pecha Kucha presentation on this topic, that is, a seven-minute slideshow using only images.

The result of this challenge is the video below, which will help you get started on the journey of finding and welcoming new members to your group, and describes the major milestones that journey might encompass.

This guide will help you begin reading sheet music in a choir.  

In written music, all the symbols contain information about what to sing and how to sing it. There is a lot of information on the page - over time all of this will be useful but don’t worry if it takes time to get the hang of it. 

Many choirs use sheet music as a tool to learn their repertoire, but needing to read sheet music is a barrier to many people looking to join a choir. This resource will help choirs support new and potential members learning to read sheet music.

Written music is a symbolic language that provides a lot of information in a small space, but this can make it confusing if you haven’t come across it before. However, it is a skill that can be learnt, especially with the encouragement and structure of a music group. 

This agreement, reached between the Musicians' Union and Making Music in 2017 (updated in 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024) provides guideline minimum rates for groups when engaging freelance professional musicians. 

We are very pleased to have renewed our agreement with the Musicians’ Union which is now in its seventh year.  

Using good-quality images in your marketing is an effective way to attract attention, drive engagement, and boost ticket sales and membership; however, it’s essential to ensure you have permission to use them to avoid copyright infringement. 

Making an arrangement of a piece of music is fairly common practice among leisure-time music groups, but there are a number of things to consider before you can make one.

Some data

From our Big Survey 2022, we know performing groups commission at least 1430 arrangements each year. 

But we think this might be the tip of the iceberg and there is much more work being done by very skilled professionals.  

The Making Music members’ insurance scheme is run by Finch, specifically for our members. It is offered to those members of Making Music which operate on a voluntary (ie non-professional) basis, for ‘activities associated with the general promotion of music and the performance of musical works’.