MusicFirst – Creative Funding Approaches for Music Departments
Fundamental principles When putting together any application for funding within or outside of your school or Multi-Academy Trust, it is worth considering these fundamentals, possibly even building on them as the foundation of your proposal:
A. Music Education is for everyone Music will have an impact across the school, not just for those taking exam courses or who have extra vocal or instrument lessons. Highlight that whole school/community impact to underline the benefits that supporting music will have across the whole school.
B. Music Education includes much more than simply performing Look at the different ways funding could impact everything you could do in Music, not just the numbers learning instruments or showcase events. Opportunities for students to engage in listening, composing and much more show the long-lasting impact that funding can have. Your project may find students who are fantastically creative but not necessarily performers -- perhaps composers who have only recently started learning to play an instrument or sing, for example.
C. Active participation in Music has other, non-musical, well documented benefits There is a growing amount of evidence to demonstrate how participation in Music can have direct benefit to brain plasticity, ability to remember information, higher emotional intelligence, better communication and social skills, more effective teamwork and much, much more besides. There is a direct correlation between participation in Music and higher exam results at GCSE. To select just three studies: • Cambridge Assessment • Journal of Educational Psychology • Liberty University – a dissertation
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