CASE STUDY: SINGING - KernowVoice improves singing provision in Cornwall

CASE STUDY: WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT - Involving Young People: MZONE Young Promoters

CASE STUDY: EARLY YEARS - The Tow Law Tiny Tunes project

Youth Music project to feature on BBC Radio 4

Youth Music case studies

Youth Music case study videos

Youth Music Action Zone

Youth Music is a UK-wide charity set up in 1999 to provide high quality and diverse music-making opportunities for 0-18 year olds. It targets young people living in areas of social and economic need who might otherwise lack opportunity and predominantly supports activities which are held outside school hours. 

The organisation has three main roles; funder, development agency and advocate. Our aim is to establish a music-making legacy that fulfils the following key objectives:

Access - For those with least opportunity
Breadth - Music of all styles and all cultures
Coverage - Rural, urban, coastal and UK-wide
Development - music leaders getting better at what they do
Quality - Encouraging high standards for all

Youth Music receives £10m a year National Lottery funding through Arts Council England. It has also levered in more than £13.7m in partnership funding from other sources.

By 2010, Youth Music aims to have reached more than 3 million young people and their wider communities.

Youth Music distributes its funds in a variety of ways including

Open Programmes - open for general application
Partnership Programmes - potential partnership organisations invited to submit proposals
Action Zones - solicited applications from regional consortiums
Youth Music initiatives - initiatives or events that complement the above programmes

In most cases organisations will be applying for Open Programmes, but the following list of conditions applies to all Youth Music funding:

What we currently fund:

• Funding is available to not-for-profit organisations over a period of six to 24 months
• Participants must be 0-18 (or up to 25 year olds with special educational needs (SEN), disabilities or in detention)
• Music-making activity must take place principally outside of school hours (except for children aged 0-5 years and young people with SEN or in detention
• Organisations over one year old
• Activities that involve training and development
• Structured music-making activities which are planned to advance children and young people's music skills
  
  

What we currently cannot fund:

• Instrument purchase
• Profit making organisations
• Management development
• Activities that have already taken place
• Fundraising events or competitions
• Capital projects
• Core funding for organisations
• Individual schools (we can only fund a consortium of schools made up of two or more institutions)
• Individuals – such as students or young musicians
• Equipment purchase – although 5\% of the allocated budget is available for equipment purchase (10\% in the Make It Sound programme)
• One-off events and trips
• Projects of less than six months in length
• Two programmes running at the same time
  Download Guidelines for Repeat Applicants (27KB Word)
• Activities that take place outside England. Youth Music receives National Lottery funding through Arts Council England so is presently unable to fund projects in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
  Information about the other nations

Useful links

Find out about Youth Music funding in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales

For more specific funding information or to make an application, visit Looking For Funding

For more detailed information on Youth Music read our FAQs