Statement of intent

Surrey Music Hub is a partnership between schools and a rich range of stakeholders, including schools and other educational settings, music education providers, parents and carers, and children and young people, Surrey County Council and others. We will work to drive sustainable change within music education locally, regionally and nationally to maximise opportunities for children and young people to realise their musical aspirations. 

---

Surrey Music Hub aims to ensure that we advocate for best practice with partners for example regarding IDEA, governance, quality and safeguarding. We aim to develop our partnership working over the course of the next year to maximise our reach and increase inclusive opportunities for C&YP. Current partnerships with an inclusion focus include the following: 

Virtual school partnership 

We will continue to work closely with Surrey Virtual School. Recently the Head of the Virtual School joined SMH Steering Board, this will enable new collaborations, learning and better partnership working between SMH partners from 2023-2024 and into the future. 

Southern Alliance Partnership – AIME programme 

“Our Future Music” is a five-year strategic program funded by Youth Music that the Southern Music Hub Alliance have been working together to deliver to increase musical inclusion for children and young people. 

The program has offered diverse and inclusive music programs, supports young people with special needs, facilitates youth-led music spaces, and provides training and resources for inclusive approaches. 

In our final year of the existing programme (23-24) we will be launching a new website with resources and case studies to support the wider music education sector and embed learning from the programme. 

There is an on-going commitment to continuing the partner work that has developed through the AIME programme across the SE region. 

IDEA programme 

During 2023 Surrey Music Hub has been one of 8 music hubs nationally to be a partner of the Youth Music IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, access) programme. This is an advocacy programme with an intended output of a national accreditation process to help music hubs to benchmark their progress towards becoming fully inclusive. As well as contributing to this process we have drawn in additional funding to develop 3 workstreams: 

i. An EDI focussed review of our CPD offer to schools and our communications with schools 

ii. A staff led project to develop a resource base for diversifying repertoire used by Surrey Arts instrumental teachers 

iii. The development of a narrative, incorporating visuals and text that tells the story of our IDEA journey over the last 5 years, to be published on our web site 

This work is currently in process and scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023.