June 2006

This week, Youth Music is announcing its innovative new Passport to Music scheme. Just like a normal passport can chart your journey around the world the Passport to Music has been designed to record the musical journeys of children and young people.

The Passport is designed to help remove the barriers that children and young people face which can prevent them from making music. Finding a child or young person with no interest in music is virtually impossible yet a comparatively small (albeit growing) number manage to access the many high quality opportunities which are available to them to actively take part in music making.

Youth Music has developed its Passport to Music as a major new pledge to the government backed Music Manifesto – a campaign for improvement in music education. The scheme will combine a physical passport which children will be given, with an interactive website. The website will provide children and young people with a safe place to record and document their music and track their musical achievement. It also will act as a search engine through which children and young people will be able to identify music making opportunities available to them in their area.

The Passport to Music will enable children, particularly those about to make the move from primary to secondary school, to record what music they’ve done already, what music they like and what they’d ideally like to do in the future. Crucially it will encourage them to think about and explore other types of music making that they may not have thought about before, but which may create that spark of enthusiasm to get them going on their musical journeys.

Why is Youth Music doing this?
The Passport to Music is fundamentally about taking action on the issue of children and young people making the transition from primary to secondary school, a time when typically, many children who have previously been musically active, stop. Research has shown that this is mainly because of a perceived lack of choices of instrument or genre or through a loss of confidence and resulting reluctance to ‘speak up’ about what kinds of music they’d like to get involved in. Similar barriers apply equally to children who might otherwise choose to begin their musical involvement at around age 11 or 12. Through removing some of these barriers and connecting musical experiences for children,both inside and outside the classroom, Youth Music intends to get many more children actively making music by 2010. Since 1999 over 1 million children and young people have taken part in music making thanks to the investment of Youth Music. Youth Music believes that many more children and young people continue to make music outside of school, whether this is with or without adult involvement. They are seeking, through the Passport to Music, to connect this music making to what goes on in school.

Christina Coker, Chief Executive of Youth Music said today:

“In line with Youth Music’s established ethos, our Passport to Music puts children and young people in control of their music making. We will ensure that children and young people will be consulted at every step of the way so that their views and opinions form the basis of how this programme is developed. We hope that through our Passport to Music we can enhance and make more visible to children and young people the pathways of sequenced musical learning that are available to them across all genres of music in a variety of learning contexts.”

Youth Music is looking for partnerships of Primary/Secondary schools, Local Authority Music Services, Community Music organisations and others to help to develop this programme. Initially, they will be offering funding for three pilot partnerships of £30,000 each. Pilot Partnerships will hear whether or not their bid has been successful by August 2006.

How can we get involved in the pilot?
The Passport to Music is now closed for expressions of interest to the pilot.  For up to date information on how the programme is developing please visit the Passport blog

For further press information please contact:
Dvora Lewis Public Relations
T: 020 7435 9257
E: dlpr@dvoralewis.com


Web development tender
Youth Music is currently seeking a web developer to create the Passport to Music online resource.}
THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS HAS NOW PASSED.



Notes to Editors:

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.

Youth Music receives £10m a year lottery funding through the Arts Council England. It also has levered in more than £13.7m in partnership from other sources.  Youth Music distributes money it receives to develop and implement a UK-wide strategy to support youth-music making that will:

• Establish a legacy of music-making opportunities for children/young people
• Improve overall standards of music-making
• Champion the value of music-making to the lives of young children and young people up to the age of 18 years old
• Establish music-making opportunities for regenerating whole communities

Youth Music’s Passport to Music is part of our work within Transition, which is one of Youth Music’s five Priority areas from 2005 – 2010.

1.  Transition:

• Improving opportunities for children to continue with their music making after they move to secondary school.
• Music projects can help with the transition from primary to secondary school.
• Youth Music is targeting the 10 – 14 age group as this a key time when children give up on their music-making.
• Youth Music has observed that many children give up because the practices, infrastructures and strategy needed it support music-making at this crucial stage is not always in place.  Youth Music is investing significant funds to address this.
  
  Aims:
  
• To increase the number of children making music after their transition to secondary school in and out of school hours.
• To provide evidence that transition music programmes provide benefit to a child’s social, educational and personal development
  

2. Early Years:
To ensure that every child aged 0-5 has access to music-making opportunities in England.

3. Singing: To increase the number of children and young people participating in vocal activities by 1 million by 2010.

4. At Risk: To establish music-making as a medium for benefiting children and young people deemed to be at risk

5. Workforce development: To improve the quality and quantity of music leadership in order to deliver better music-making opportunities for children and young people.

For further information visit www.youthmusic.org.uk

The Music Manifesto is a campaign for improvement in music education. Youth Music is proud to be a signatory and to be leading the Singing Workstream. Visit the website and join up at www.musicmanifesto.co.uk