 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Inside the music zone
Alex Klaushofer focuses on a low-profile Lottery distributor
Make sure you receive your fair share of lottery cash - take out a no-obligation trial subscription
today.
As a delegated distributor, the National Foundation for Youth Music is one of the lesser-known sources of Lottery funding. The organisation was set up in 1999 with a pot of £30m from the Arts Council of England to fund music activities for young people in England. In July last year, the allocation of a further £30m over three years assured its future until 2005. Youth Music aims to reach under-18s who would otherwise lack opportunities to get involved in music making. Many of its projects are in deprived areas, although some target ‘musically deprived’ children in affluent areas. Music is seen in its widest sense, ranging from classical to
bhangra. In out-of-school projects, beginners and advanced students can play in an orchestra or learn DJ skills. Christina Coker, NFYM’s chief executive, says that making music meaningful is a key part of the criteria for receiving an award. The foundation looks for applications with ‘a clear indication that the type of music offered has a resonance with the young people,’ she says. She adds that projects should also have ‘a relationship with things that are going on in the area’.
The Samba Vibes project in the former mining communities of the Midlands is a case in point. A series of workshops for 12-18 year olds in Bolsolver near Sheffield is bringing together samba and brass band colliery music, leading up to performances and, it is hoped, the establishment of a local samba group. The idea is to combine music-making with regeneration priorities. The project’s coordinator Maggie Braley says, ‘We try to work with whatever’s going on locally and introduce new influences.’ The project has received £18,000 from Youth Music. A further £1,000 from Derbyshire County Council and local schools, and a £1,000 in-kind donation of time and premises make up its total cost of £20,000 and meet the requirement that projects of more than £10,000 raise at least 10% of the value in partnership funding. Braley says that applying for funding from Youth Music was ‘a very simple process in some ways’. But she adds that a delay in the decision from Youth Music made planning the project difficult. ‘In these sorts of communities if you say you’re going to do something, you have to have the money,’ she says.
With an award of £47,000, Project Flutewise is offering a series of flute days for 7-18 year olds in eight areas across the country. Liz Goodwin, flautist and project coordinator, was surprised to find that the children most in need of musical opportunities were in a private school. ‘It’s often thought that the funding ought to go to deprived areas. What I’m discovering is that deprived children often have very well-heeled parents,’ she says.
So far, Youth Music has made 880 awards, amounting to £22.5m. The
The organisation raised £1.2m through the sales of an Abbamania CD, using some of this money to fund programmes such as the instrument amnesty – where people’s no-longer-played instruments are distributed to those who want them
organisation estimates that this has involved 280,000 participants, and calculates that for every participant there are at least three others who derive secondary, community benefits. Coker sees the organisation’s ability to solicit bids, as it has done for its 20 music action zones, as an important tool for targeting specific areas strategically. Birmingham Youth Music Action Zone began in December with a Youth Music award of £368,000 for its first year. It raised the remaining 30% of the money it needed from the local authority, regional arts board and local charities. For the next three years its Youth Music grant drops to about £100,000 a year, so it will need to raise more from elsewhere. The zone has 11 consortium members, with Midlands Arts Centre as the lead partner. Zone manager Val Birchall says the pressures of getting the bid in on time meant that the planning of activities could have been done better. ‘Next time we will do things in a more flexible way. You have to get a balance between saying exactly what you’re going to do to get the money and then finding that isn’t exactly what’s needed,’ she says. To avoid this, she suggests that there should be funding for research in future. This month Youth Music is launching a new round of funding
programmes. These include music making for the under-fives, music technology for 8-14 year olds and singing projects. Youth Music also has its own fundrais-ing challenge to contend with. Since its resources come from the Arts Council of England, it is not able to fund projects elsewhere in the UK. The organisation raised £1.2m itself through the sales of an Abbamania CD, using some of this money to fund programmes such as the UK-wide instrument amnesty – where people’s no-longer-played instruments are donated, repaired, and distributed to those who want them. But with this money now spent, there is no funding for projects in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Coker is negotiating with the devolved administrations and arts councils in the hope of getting UK-wide funding. But she says, ‘Nothing has yet been brokered. Nobody has identified any Lottery funding that could be ring-fenced that could do the same job as the Arts Council of England.’ She sounds more confident about Youth Music’s future after 2005, when the current tranche of funding runs out. Although nothing is guaranteed, she says that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Arts Council of England are ‘delighted’ with the organi-sation’s work. ‘What we have unearthed is a type of music-making activity that has little or no funding from the mainstream system,’ she says.
Contact Youth Music at 1 America St, London SE1 0NE; Tel: 020 7902 1060; email:
info@youthmusic.org.uk www.youthmusic.org.uk