Newham is on a journey to grow, nurture and diversify relevant and inclusive music education offered in schools and communities, developing and enriching creative opportunities for this vibrant London borough's young people. Funded by Newham Council, supported by Newham Music (music hub), and, crucially, driven by schools themselves, Newham's Music Enrichment Programme is active in 98% of primary and secondary schools and many early years settings. This scheme has grown and developed over the past five years, directly impacting the lives of thousands of Newham's young people, including over 25,000 in 2023–24.
Here, we share our evolving model of creating a rich music ecology, developed as a ‘thinking tool’ for planning, supporting, evaluating and cele§brating music education across schools and communities. Our ambition in sharing this model is to facilitate critical discussion and encourage innovation in these challenging times.
Bucking national trends
Transformative social justice sits at the heart of Newham's commitment to music, the wider arts and cultural lives of the borough's residents. Acknowledging and working with the challenges and aspirations of Newham's diverse communities is key.
Newham can be described by an unenviable raft of statistics laying bare the daily challenges its residents face. It is the twelfth-most deprived borough out of 317 in England and has ‘the highest rate of destitution in the country’ (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2023). Yet Newham bucks the trend on national statistics demonstrating that the poorest communities have the lowest educational outcomes and musical opportunities. It's ranked fourth nationally for standards reached by pupils aged 11 in English and Maths, and 17th nationally for outcomes at KS4, with attainment scores well above Inner London and national averages, and more young people than average continuing study in higher education (DfE data). Music qualifications are offered in 90% of Newham's secondary schools, and GCSE Music uptake exceeds the national average and has grown over recent years, contrasting with the national decline. Causality is difficult to attribute, yet there's clear correlation between investment in music enrichment and overall attainment and progress.
Unless music education is free to access, most of Newham's young people cannot participate. Newham's decision to focus funding on free, targeted music enrichment is supported by rigorous research demonstrating music education's mitigating role for young people facing disadvantage, leading to stronger educational outcomes (e.g. Gill, 2020; Baker et al., 2023).
Music Enrichment Grants programme
Established in 2019, this programme supports and develops musical infrastructure. It seeks to create targeted opportunities for young people to engage, grow and thrive through musical learning, and with a view to building a brighter future for the whole community.
Following a rigorous application process overseen by Newham Council and Newham Music, grants targeting ‘music enrichment’ are awarded to schools and early years providers. Music enrichment purposely spans three key strategic areas: Education, Training, Lifelong Learning; Newham's Community Wealth Building Strategy; and Building Newham's Creative Future.
It starts from the premise that all schools have existing music provision to enrich, promoting autonomy for schools to choose for themselves what their unique communities want and need. Examples of recent work include:
- diversifying opportunities for young people to work with new genres and musicians
- creating bespoke music programmes for pupils with SEND
- embedding musical learning across early years provision and utilising music to support language and communication, strengthening links and continuity between home and school
- developing the quality of teaching and diversity of music leaders through professional development and co-working
- creating opportunities for starting or continuing instrumental tuition, including new ensembles and choirs
- developing opportunities for communities to co-create, perform and record music
- proliferating opportunities for live music and collaborating with professional musicians, venues and other schools.
Each school's accounts must show this grant as a separate ring-fenced entry. Schools plan and evaluate the grant's impact against their own ambitions, identifying how it supports and enhances their existing provision and the impact on specific communities. There is a clear expectation that senior leaders engage with evaluation processes. Evaluation tools and methods are purposefully designed to feed iteratively into programmes, encouraging organisations to reflect upon, celebrate and further develop their current and evolving music provision holistically, rather than considering enrichment in isolation.
Ownership through creative music-making
Multiple examples are emerging of creative communities and musical ecosystems permeating school cultures. Changes in attitude and the development of new practices and opportunities have led schools to invest more of their own time and resources to engage young people in music within and beyond school. Senior leaders frequently highlight how fostering creativity and self-expression through music enrichment promotes the development of young people's habits, values, behaviours and attitudes, with visible impacts on musical learning, wider engagement and community cohesion.
During the pilot year (2019), 700 young artists from 14 primary and secondary schools co-created and performed Newham's community opera Full Circle. This award-winning production explored young people's experiences of growing up in Newham, providing a platform to tell their story. Full Circle was an important catalyst for developing bespoke and ambitious music enrichment opportunities. Artistic competency inspired self-belief and spotlighted the transformative potential of collaborative, creative learning models and stepping outside our comfort zone, raising expectations and aspirations.
Performed at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of the prestigious Music for Youth Proms, Full Circle engaged a community unaccustomed to performing or being part of the audience at a world-class venue. The significance of this journey and feelings of empowerment, ownership and identity Full Circle evoked are still felt across the community. It cemented the narrative of ‘no limits’ on what Newham's communities could achieve, and encouraged schools to take creative musical risks for and with their young people.
These important tenets underpin Newham's School Music Grants programme; they build on the cornerstones of participation, progression, sustainability and professional development, with related actions for each.
Evolving times, evolving priorities
Over the five years of funding, through and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic, this programme continually evolves. Developing a rich music education ecology is a priority that schools increasingly adopt for music, alongside investing in resources that will engage more young people and inspire them to try something new.
Unique, diverse, targeted programmes have diversified schools' musical offers. For example, DJs worked alongside classroom teachers to upskill them, so that classroom curriculum and extra-curricular clubs feed off each other, and the borough probably has the UK's first primary school veena orchestra. There are newly established creative arts festivals, new inclusive qualifications for young people with a range of learning needs, and plenty of musical opportunities, new partnerships and professional networks.
Yet there are multiple and often simultaneous emergent challenges to navigate. Evaluation findings led to developing a model – shown above – distilling this thinking and research on music education ecology that values and nurtures diverse and evolving educational, cultural, economic and social contexts in Newham. Underpinning this evolving model is a growing evidence-base of research, case studies and films, created with and by the community – young people, teachers, school leaders, music practitioners and families, all with their own stories to tell and music to celebrate. Examples of conundrums include:
- When introducing new genres that are more representative of a local community, how do you recruit and develop community musicians, help them flexibly develop suitable pedagogies and yet maintain authentic practices?
- How can schools develop and grow fruitful partnerships and sustained collaborations with organisations that further their priorities and aspirations, rather than accept predefined options from providers?
- How do schools prioritise diversification of accredited opportunities when accountability measures work against the arts?
- How can play-based approaches to developing musical engagement and curiosity be nurtured when key learning targets may be perceived to need ‘direct teaching’?
- Does the scheme of learning plan for musical progression, rather than just being a ‘nice set of activities’?
The model aims to challenge us to think deeply (and honestly) about inclusion and exclusion, collaboration, congruences and dissonances across provision, and implementing, sustaining and evolving meaningful engagement and progression across diverse communities and contexts. It reminds us of the importance of giving due consideration to environmental factors, being culturally respectful and responsive, and building and evaluating musical learning around shared priorities, values and visions.
Transformative change
Across Newham, a rich and eclectic music education ecology is emerging, with music weaving through schools' cultural ether, supporting holistic, as well as musical, learning and engagement. Transformative change takes courage, ownership, considerable time and concerted effort; changing attitudes so that others want and value music in new ways is crucial in this.
We could not have predicted the organic growth and direction of music enrichment at the start of this journey, which is how it should be. Strong music education ecosystems are flexible; responsive and reflexive to young people and communities as their experiences and interests deepen, broaden and evolve. They draw upon, value and extend young people's musical engagement and interests from inside and outside the school and formal ‘systems’. They nourish individual and collective musical identities through supporting autonomy and valuing authenticity, spreading joy and engendering a sense of belonging, purpose and ownership.
Links and references
- Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2023). Destitution in the UK 2023
- Gill, T. (2020) The relationship between taking a formal music qualification and overall attainment at Key Stage 4
- Baker, D., Hallam, S. and Rogers, K. (2023) ‘Does learning to play an instrument have an impact on change in attainment from age 11 to 16?’ British Journal of Music Education, 40(3). DOI: 10.1017/S0265051723000116
