Early years music practitioners from the West Midlands have been active in developing training for early years workers to work with musicians, and to develop their own music leading skills. Sound It Out Community Music was one of the first agencies to develop this training, which is now rolling out through MusicLeader courses and Youth Music Action Zones (YMAZs).  The Sound Futures YMAZ is running a cluster programme linking orchestral musicians and early years music specialists for training and practical work in children's centres.

There are many different approaches to early years music.  There are First Steps programmes currently in Wolverhampton, Sandwell and Coventry. In Herefordshire the Music Pool offers early years music in many different settings, and has followed many groups of children through from nursery into school reception using developing musical activities.

Melody Monkey’s Marvellous Music Box has been widely used in Worcestershire both in music sessions at local libraries and in early years settings.

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There are many great singing activities in the West Midlands for young people. Vocal activities are offered by music services, and there have been Vocalise funded projects recently in Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire Moorlands, Birmingham and Wolverhampton including the Singing Pyramid in Birmingham offering progression through area choirs to central groups and City of Birmingham Young Voices.

Sandwell hosted a Singing Community programme from 2003 – 2005. As part of the programme the renowned choir Ex Cathedra developed the Singing Playgrounds project and method, to encourage singing by all children and staff in primary schools, using traditional songs and games. Ex Cathedra is now in demand to run training days and new Singing Playgrounds projects far and wide.  This work is now being rolled out as part of the Sing Up programme's Hearts and Minds campaign.

Make Some Noise Youth Music Action Zone working with Stoke on Trent City Music and Performing Arts Service, and Staffordshire Performing Arts have developed the Songbirds scheme to establish singing groups in primary schools and support teachers in leading them.

Burton-on-Trent Sing Up Community is about to start activities in 2008

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New Roots YMAZ for Shropshire, Herefordshire and Telford and Wrekin has run a series of successful rockschool projects, bringing together  year 6 children from feeder primary schools, with others from year 7 in their new secondary school. They work together with a team of professional musicians during a week long residency in the secondary school over the summer holidays. Working  on well known songs and their own music, the children can choose to learn guitar, bass, keyboard, drums or vocal, to form bands which perform in a final showcase.

Birmingham based Sound It Out Community Music has run the innovative Elements project for several years in Hamstead Hall School, working with feeder primary schools. Young musicians both beginner and experienced work on improvisation and devising their own music in an amazing range of styles. The end result has often been new fusion sounds that take audiences by storm. Sound It Out has now worked with Dudley Performing Arts and Sandwell Youth Music to bring the project to schools in the Black Country.

Make some Noise YMAZ has a long running drumming project for transition age children, Madula, run by Planet Sound Community Arts.

Sound Futures YMAZ and Birmingham Music Services are working on ways of developing a music Passport scheme for Birmingham children.

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Sound Futures YMAZ works with Punch Records and Crush Music among others, in delivering a range of projects with young people in high crime risk areas in music making. Many of these have involved partnerships with local police and other agencies.

Planet Sound Community Arts in Stoke on Trent, working with Make Some Noise YMAZ has run intensive music residencies for young people at risk and looked after children.

In Leamington Spa, Hybrid Arts runs accredited music technology programmes which attract many young people disaffected with mainstream education.

The Sonic DB project in Staffordshire YOIs has brought inmates the chance to be creative using state of the art music technology. One anti gun and gang crime track created at HMPYOI Swinfen was played on Tim Westwood's Radio 1 show. For more infomrmation, please visit www.sonicdb.co.uk

New Roots YMAZ works closely with NACRO offering music workshops to their young clients in Telford and Shrewsbury. New funding for this work has been awarded by Arts Council England (WM)

Respect agenda – The government funded music mentoring programme Respect, is running in Birmingham (run by Sound Futures) and Sandwell (run by Sound It Out).

Coventry Youth Offending Service was awarded a Make it Sound grant to run musical workshops as part of its programme of positive activities for young people in areas of high anti-social behaviour and youth crime

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Any Youth Music funded programme has to employ a paid trainee and offer professional development opportunities to strengthen and develop the workforce.  Through Youth Music’s Musicleader.net initiative, all music leaders across the UK have access to online information, advice and guidance.

MusicLeader West Midlands was launched in 2005 and has run successful training courses, networking events, and very popular Information Advice and Guidance surgeries around the region since then.  It also keeps subscribers informed of many other cpd opportunities offered by other providers and works with partners to close the gaps in provision.

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