Music Skills

Music Skills in Yorkshire and the North East, Generator and Music Local

In the North East, Music Local (Yorkshire) and Generator (Newcastle/regional) are providing business and talent development support to the local music industry. They have developed a broad range of schemes across the region but have faced three key challenges:

• The inflexibility of these programmes – the expected outputs require big employers but for the music industry, success is found instead from freelancers and micro businesses who may not be offering salaried positions.

• Administrative pressures for local/combined authorities – tenders can be large and expected to cover the whole of the creative industries and often require equitable distribution across different areas and sectors. This favours larger training providers or education institutions who may not have specialist industry knowledge or experience.

• Eligibility – tenders often have a high minimum financial profile which makes it prohibitive to smaller local providers who become reliant on consortium bids.

They have worked around these constraints by developing relationships outside of the traditional tender process with specialist organisations, both locally and nationally for partnerships and investment, whilst working with local authorities to adapt business skills and career development funds where possible.

For example, Music Local’s Launchpad programme (talent development) is supported by ACE, Youth Music, PRS Foundation, Leeds and Bradford Councils, whilst Generator has worked with specialist cultural organisations (music, performing arts etc.) to develop new Level three, four and five qualifications.

In both cases, it has been reliant on the local/combined authorities being welcoming of vocationally-led delivery and partnerships with the cultural sector.