“Some may Say” inclusion is becoming exclusive….

As the new academic year dawns, the furore over the cost of tickets for the Oasis Live 25 Tour has been an interesting episode to observe. It has brought to the fore issues of affordability, access, elitism, and exclusion – all of which Music Education grapples with on a daily basis.

It has therefore provided a timely reminder of the need for Music Education to constantly challenge assumptions and truisms that have become mainstays of national funding strategies over the past 20 years.?

“Oasis must be good – just look at all those thousands of people wanting to go to the concerts”,

This plays into the narrative that popularity and cultural relevance equate to quality and are therefore a justification for inflated prices and high costs for the public to participate.

This has some sobering parallels with a prevailing narrative in Music Education that suggests that if a child or young person’s personal choice of genre is not central to their music education experience, the music education being provided is elitist, not relevant and a barrier to their future musical success.

I would like to suggest a slightly different narrative.

Firstly, the Oasis ticket price “scandal” destroys the notion that high ticket prices and accessibility to?musical opportunities are linked to:

Privilege: If Oasis are nothing else they have always been proud of being a working class band.

Genre: Opera suddenly seems incredibly good value!

Elitism: Whether it’s Oasis, Glastonbury or Stormzy, a much broader demographic manages to afford their tickets, without the judgement given on the profile and background of opera and orchestral audiences.

It is clear therefore that elitism, exclusion and privilege are not driven by genre. However, in music education there still pervades the notion that “traditional is elitist and therefore exclusive” and “contemporary genres are relevant and therefore more inclusive.”

“You won’t like that, therefore do this.”

This is problematic for a number of reasons. It creates the unintended consequence of creating a compensatory culture of inclusion. Paradoxically, this is creating exclusion to certain genres for children and young people because the narrative encourages judgements to be made about genre relevance without them having the opportunity for a meaningful experience.

The reality is that whilst inclusion plans and strategies are important, they are almost invariably “comfort plans” that deflect the narrative from the two single biggest barriers to inclusion:?

1. At the heart of high quality, inclusive music making are high quality, inclusive music teachers and practitioners. The greatest barrier to more children and young people accessing a high-quality music education is restricted access to high quality teachers and practitioners. Investment in the workforce has dropped significantly over the last twenty years. There may be all of the ambition and commitment to inclusion, but it is not a substitute for being able to offer meaningful career progression, job security and investment in the music teaching profession.
2. Insufficient funding is available to broaden access to provision and invest in bespoke pathways. With genuine pressures on the public finances, significant new investment seems a long way off. In the absence of new investment, here are two suggestions:

Regional Decision Making

There is a need to examine the interface between national funding bodies and the new regional network of music hubs. There is too little capacity for small organisations, charities and sole traders to apply for national grants.

If a funder has a national remit, it should devolve its funding to the regional music hubs to allow local, independent Boards to make the decisions about which organisations and individuals in their communities need investment. These Boards, which are best placed in terms of local knowledge, can then be held to account for these decisions.

As a sector, we are too centralised and too reliant on decision makers with no stake in, or true understanding of, the needs of localised regions. This move would be consistent with the increasing local accountability in other sectors. Let’s be brave and empower regional music hubs and work through them rather than in parallel or “despite” them. Let's trust that they are best placed to ensure that best value is achieved, maximising the reach and effectiveness of funding across each region.

Performance-Led Organisations.

The other “radical” decision would be to fund our opera houses, orchestras, choirs and other performance organisations and institutions to do just that – perform. Art for art’s sake (which is increasingly feeling like cry of arts for F*%^$ sake…) is not only no bad thing, but in fact, the right thing.

Again, redirect education funding to the regional music hubs and task the national performance organisations to work with these hubs to ensure that access and opportunity to them is embedded at a regional level.

The current system means all organisations are tasked with doing “education and outreach” with some succeeding amazingly and others less so. The practitioners however are often the same, straddling the complex world of multi-employment, high volume, low value invoicing to make a living, rather than being able to be given a secure tenure and then “commissioned out” to the organisations that need them.

The result of these assumptions around inclusion and genre, is that we are at risk of socially engineering young peoples’ attitude and response to music. In no other subject would we try and predicate a style of approach to learning based on learner preferences.

“If only I hadn’t learned to read music I would have become a more authentic musician” – says absolutely no-one.

We do not create more engineers by teaching just the types of engineering that young people want to embark on. ?We do not create more doctors by only teaching the areas of medicine young people are interested in. High quality teaching inspires and opens young minds to possibilities. It also informs a young person’s choices. Saying “no” to a particular genre is a valid choice, but it must be an informed choice.

Imposed judgements about genres and styles that young people should learn pre-prescribes pathways which then become closed to young people because they have not acquired the necessary core skills to follow that particular path.

High quality musical teaching and learning is the incremental imparting and embedding of musical skills. By acquiring these skills, children and young people become empowered to make informed musical choices.

The paradox of our (genuine) commitment to inclusion is that we are in danger of disenfranchising a generation of learners who could embrace, be inspired by, and make informed choices (both for and against) about musical styles, by giving all children and young people a broad and balanced grounding in traditional styles of music making as a platform from which they can diversify.

The simple, one line inclusion strategy is to fund music education to a level where genuine inclusive practice is available to all, because of the high-quality infrastructure and workforce that comes as a result of meaningful investment.

James H. Dickinson - Head of Hull Music Service www.hullmusicservice.com @jdhornblower

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