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Each year, B:Music connect over 18,000 young people and adults to a world of music and performance.

Key Stage 1: Introduce your students to live music with a FREE pop-up performance at school. 

Key Stage 2: Challenge your pupils with an interactive performance, with live music from one of England’s finest historical instruments, at Birmingham’s historic landmark venue, Town Hall. Town Hall History Hunt is a partnership with Needless Allies Theatre Collective, available termly.

Key Stages 3 and 4, A Level and BTEC Music: Motivate students to pursue careers in the arts with this range of complementary activities, available when you attend a Birmingham Classical concert. Whether a pre-concert talks, meeting the musicians, a Q&A with the Artistic Programming Team or a session on marketing the concert series, these interactive add-ons are guaranteed to inspire a creative mind.

Key Stage 2: Join a team of musicians, technicians and a science specialist as the world-renowned Symphony Hall is transformed into an interactive sound laboratory. The Science of Sound occurs termly.

11-19 Year Olds:  The Jazzlines Ensembles provide young musicians from Birmingham and the surrounding areas with the opportunity to play in an ensemble. These talented young people learn about jazz and improvisation through regular workshops and masterclass sessions. The sessions are open to young musicians of all abilities, from beginners to advanced and are free to young musicians aged between 11 and 19.

Under 30s: Tickets for just £5 are available at every Birmingham Classical Season concert. 

Book online here.

BCU provides professional training for Teachers in Early Years, Primary, Secondary and Post Graduate levels as well as undertakes education research.

Professor Martin Fautley is the representative for Music Education specialising in assessment. BCU continue to evaluate and inform the quality of BMEH activity.

Find out more here.

BCMG Learn & Take Part

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) is one of Europe’s leading new music ensembles. We have commissioned over 200 new works from living composers since our foundation in 1987. Since 2000, our learning programme, BCMG Learn & Take Part, has focussed on supporting young people to compose in and out of school, commissioning new music for youth and non-professional ensembles through our Flourish! project, presenting concerts for school and family audiences, and creating an extensive online library of digital learning resources. In 2024, BCMG won ‘Excellence in Primary/Early Years’ at the annual Music & Drama Awards for its project Listen Imagine Compose Primary.

Schools:

BCMG offers composing workshops for primary and secondary classes, composer residencies and professional development for teachers. Though we can provide one-off and short-term projects, our preference is to build long term relationships with schools. Recently, much of this work has been done through our Listen Imagine Compose Primary Project funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The first phase of this project saw professional composers working in 5 primary schools in Birmingham and 3 in Bristol over 2 years following 480 children from Year 4 to Year 5. Our CPD offers, developed as a result of LICP can be found HERE. We also have an extensive set of digital resources which can be found HERE including our recently published Listen Imagine Compose Primary Toolkit. Listen Imagine Compose resources focussed on improving the teaching and learning of composing at KS3, 4 & 5 can be found HERE.

Weekend workshops:

BCMG has a year-round programme of weekend composing and creative music workshops for young people at CBSO Centre. Workshops are free (with an optional donation), but places must be booked in advance.

• Music Maze: monthly creative music-making workshops for children (KS2) inspired by music, themes and ideas from BCMG’s concerts. Led by BCMG Director of Learning Nancy Evans and BCMG musicians.
• BCMG Young Composers: series of 4 weekend workshops over a term in which young people (KS3) compose for two BCMG musicians, led by composer Kirsty Devaney (Royal College of Music).
• Creative Composing Lab: termly day-long workshops for young people (KS4&5) to compose for three BCMG musicians, guided by composer David Horne (Royal Northen College of Music).

Listen to and watch music composed by young people participating in our programme HERE.

www.bcmg.org.uk

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“You only have to spend 5 minutes with an Ex Cathedra vocal tutor and you’ll want to sing!”  Howard Goodall CBE, Ambassador for the national singing programme, Sing Up 2007 – 11

Ex Cathedra has an award-winning education and participation programme working across Birmingham, the UK and internationally. The education and participation work has developed to become a leader in its field.

Every year we work with tens of thousands of children and young people and their families, train hundreds of teachers, work in partnership with music hubs across the UK, travel internationally, and present to and engage people in singing at many events in many settings.

Our Education Team is passionate about engaging people in life enhancing, accessible, meaningful and enjoyable singing activities, bringing the wider well-being benefits of singing to participants, and developing vocal skills and musicianship.

The team writes its own dynamic repertoire for participants’ teaching and learning aims, needs and enjoyment.

Ex Cathedra’s education and participation work falls into 4 areas and we also design projects in response to requests and partner needs.

1. Schools and education settings

Singing Playgrounds: whole school child-led initiative; SingMaker: concert hall events with complementary teacher training and resources; Singing Connections: singing games for word and number play development.

2. Healthcare settings

Singing Medicine: singing play for well-being for children in hospital; Singing Pathways for adults who have had a stroke and dementia

3. Community settings

A range of one-off devised projects; and Ladywood Community Choir

4. Academy of Vocal Music – 4 choirs for children aged between 4 and 18 years.

Children’s Academy 1, Children’s Academy 2, Junior Academy, Senior Girls Academy, Senior Boys Academy

Find out more here.

Quench Arts is a Community Interest Company working across the West Midlands. We are passionate about making a positive difference through the arts and our vision is that everyone should have access to high quality participatory arts opportunities.

Our work focuses on 2 areas:

• Our own projects use music to make a real difference to people’s lives, nurturing artistic talent in areas where opportunities may be limited.
• We also support other organisations in developing their community arts practice.

Find out more here.

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MAC is a multi-art form arts centre with a strong commitment to arts for everyone, especially those for whom engagement in the arts is new.

MAC Makes Music is an award-winning programme providing innovative music making opportunities for children and young people with limited access to music provision.

We work with Families, Pupil Referral Units, Charities, Primary Schools, SEND and SEMH schools, Children’s Services, Centres for Newly Arrived Children and Young People and Resource Bases/Focus Provisions to influence sustained music making activity for those with limited access to music provision.

Our passion is to offer young people high quality music making experiences led by a team of highly experienced music leaders. The young person’s voice and creativity is at the heart of the diverse music programme that we offer. Young people are encouraged to express themselves through song writing, singing, band development, new music technology and music production.

MAC is a strategic partner of Youth Music working towards creating a musically inclusive England, where every child can access music-making opportunities, regardless of their circumstances in and out of their control. Through MAC Makes Music, we champion innovation and inclusion in music making approaches We support workforce development and advocate for equality in music education in partnership with Music Education Hubs in Birmingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Solihull and Worcestershire.

To learn more about what we do, please visit: MAC Makes Music | Midlands Arts Centre (macbirmingham.co.uk)

For any specific enquiries, please email: macmakesmusic@macbirmingham.co.uk

For many years, there have been a growing network of partners who work with the hub to deliver or commission activity. Our challenge is to shape and manage the quality of outputs within these many partnerships.

They encompass a range of local, regional and national partners. They are almost exclusively ‘music education’ partners. Our scope within the Cultural Education Challenge will undoubtedly seek to work with a broader range of multi art form partners.

On 25^th June 2022, the Department for Education (DfE) published the updated National Plan for Music Education, entitled ‘The Power of Music to Change Lives’. The updated plan builds on the first plan published back in 2011. The 84-document contains three main chapters, each focusing on one of the three central aims of the plan. The refreshed Plan does not have a set of Core and Extension Roles for Music Hubs to deliver, but highlights the importance of providing access to a broad musical culture.

The vision for Music Hub partnerships, in line with the overall NPME, is to enable all children and young people to learn to sing, play an instrument and create music together, and have the opportunity to progress their musical interests and talents, including professionally. Underpinning this vision, Music Hub partnerships will be expected to focus on the following three aims.

• Support schools and other education settings to deliver high-quality music education.
• Support all children and young people to engage with a range of musical opportunities both in and out of school.
• Support young people to develop their musical interests and talent further, including into employment.

The current National Plan For Music Education (published in 2011) outlines four core and three extension roles that all hubs are required to deliver as a condition of their funding from the Department for Education which is administered through Arts Council England and the funding for this plan along with the Core and Extension roles is in place until 31^st March 2023.