An award of £200,000 is set to benefit primary school music education in Birmingham.
The award – which comes from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Arts-Based Learning Fund – has been made to Birmingham Contemporary Music Group to extend its Listen Imagine Compose Primary (LICP) programme.
Five primary schools will host a composer-in-residence, who will work with classroom teachers and the school Music Leads to create regular opportunities for pupils to compose and embed music-making into the school curriculum.
More than 600 schoolchildren in Birmingham will benefit from the initiative over a two-year period. In addition, teachers and composers from the participating schools as well as those from other schools will have the opportunity to meet, identify common challenges, share practice and learn together.
Alongside the project, the Birmingham Music Education Research Group at Birmingham City University will lead research into how the LICP approach and resources can be embedded into schools and sustained in the long term.
In addition to its work in schools, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) plans to develop itself as a centre of excellence for composing with young people, and offer support and guidance nationally.
BCMG’s Director of Learning, Nancy Evans, said: ‘This funding is a vote of confidence in our ongoing work supporting young people to compose in and out of school, in what is the 25th anniversary year of BCMG’s learning and participation programme. Composing is often an overlooked part of the music curriculum, and one that classroom teachers can find hard to teach. This grant will enable us to sustain, grow and develop this vital and ground-breaking programme.
‘There is a persistent myth that composing is something only gifted people can do. BCMG believe all young people have the capacity to compose and progress as composers, and that is what we set out to achieve with this programme. We want composing to be a central part of children’s music learning and their emerging musical identities.’
The schools programme will begin in the autumn term 2025. Schools and professional composers based in Birmingham are invited to apply to be part of the programme; further details and how to apply can be found here.
For more details and to find out how to apply, visit here. Deadline: 6 June 2025.
