Setting up a group

To fully include everyone in our music activities, we need to understand the barriers that stop people from attending, taking part or progressing. In the Conversation about inclusion series of events, hear about the issues from the perspective of those who directly experience barriers and discuss what we can do to change things from within our own music groups. 

Often we think of income ‘only’ in terms of funding, subscriptions or ticket sales. There definitely is a lot to delve into on those three topics, but is there more we could be exploring? Are we thinking about the whole financial picture?

70% of Making Music performing groups and 58% of volunteer promoters break even every year; but 15% and 23% respectively regularly make a loss. So finances are always a topic groups are thinking about, to maintain that balancing act of breaking even, yet remaining accessible to participants and audiences in their community.

The first of our marketing events in 2025 will discuss how social media has become a key component in many organisation’s marketing strategy. But how does it differ from ‘traditional’ marketing, what should you use it for, and how can you manage your time when there are so many different platforms available? 

In this session, we’ll look at how a social media strategy can help you define your goals in line with your overall marketing plans, manage your time more effectively, and create content to target the people you most want to engage. 

Your Making music membership offers a wealth of benefits. They are designed to support you running your music group, to save time, effort and money, as well as offer ideas and inspiration.

But are you making the most of your membership? In this event we will explain what you have access to - and how we can help.

We'll talk about some of the main benefits:

To fully include everyone in our music activities, we need to understand the barriers that stop people from attending, taking part or progressing. In the Conversation about inclusion series of events, hear about the issues from the perspective of those who directly experience barriers and discuss what we can do to change things from within our own music groups.

If you’d like your group and your audience to be more diverse and inclusive, thinking about how you recruit and welcome people is crucial. And if you want to increase your membership and your audiences, recruiting and welcoming new people in a way that is inclusive means you’ve more chance of success. Whatever your driver, there are actions you can take that will remove the barriers to joining your activity and provide access to more people. 

Creating an event or activity that is accessible, welcoming and inclusive of everyone starts with one big question: what are the barriers that would exclude someone from taking part? People who experience barriers to making and enjoying music are more likely to be disabled, from an ethnic minority, have a mental or physical health condition or be in challenging socio-economic circumstances. How can you identify the barriers that exclude people from taking part in your group's events and activities, or stop people being included when they experience a change of circumstance?