The Think 2020 team have recently been reporting back to Youth Music about their first year of strategic development through the Fund C grant programme.
Think2020 aims to increase musical opportunities for disabled children and young people through strategic and sustainable partnership work in the music education sector.
Over Year 1 Think 2020 has:
- worked with over 117 music organisations, music education hubs and schools across the UK
- connected with over 790 participants through conferences, teachmeets, training and workshops, partnership sharing event and online campaigns
- launched our ‘Top 10 needs of music education hubs’ training and advocacy tool
- presented to a sold out room at the Music Education Expo in Feb, alongside Treloar school’s Jocelyn Watkins
- hosted a #MuFu twitter chat in October which saw the 2nd largest audience in MuFu history, second only to one hosted by the BBC
- brought together music hubs in the North West to discuss accreditation and SEN/D music activity
And now we’re heading into Year 2 with lots of exciting plans.
PGCE Support
We hit the ground running with a great start to meeting one of Think 2020’s key aims: to work strategically with universities to support PGCE trainee teachers in developing skills and understanding for working effectively in SEN/D settings.
This includes learning about assessment and accreditation for disabled children and young people, the assistive music technology available and how it can support teaching and an introduction to the SEN/D sector and the aims of Drake Music and our work.
Our Associate Musician Gary Day led a session with trainee music teachers at Birmingham City University where Gary introduced students to Drake Music and how to support assessment through technology in SEN/D settings.
Training sessions
We are also delivering training sessions around assistive music technology for schools, music hubs and bridge organisations.
This looks set to increase as we work with our partners over Year 2.
We are really excited to be working challenge, remove and reduce the barriers to music making for children and young people in SEN/D settings and look forward to sharing our progress over coming months.
