Inclusion has always been at the centre of SoundStorm’s work since our establishment in 2002. We have always strived to broaden our reach.

Please see our ‘Access Fund / Remissions’ section here to see how young people can access direct support to help them get access to music education.

In addition, in 2020-21, thanks to a grant from Youth Music, we commissioned Dr Phil Mullen, a highly respected independent consultant, to devise recommendations for a new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy for SoundStorm’s music hub. This new strategy was completed in autumn 2021 and made a number of strategic recommendations for the period 2022-2026 to make our Hub more inclusive. You can read Phil’s full ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy’ here. We are committed to implementing all the strategic recommendations in the Strategy by 2026.

OUT OF SCHOOL WORK

In addition to our school-based work, SoundStorm also leads projects that take place after school, or out of school altogether, in a range of different venues. These projects reach out to the wider community and are complementary to our Music Education Hub work.

A lot of this work is designed to make our activities more inclusive, targeting particular groups of young people that ordinarily face obstacles in taking part in music education. Other projects are partnerships with cultural organisations from different part of our region or even further afield, and are designed to enrich the cultural life of our conurbation and young people. Some pieces of work are strategic projects, designed to increase our knowledge as to what works and what doesn’t in the music education sector.

We also organise or support summer schools and other special out of school programmes, which give young people a chance to get involved during the holidays. These will also appear here from time to time…