MusicHE is the UK’s subject association for music in higher education. We represent the voices of those working university departments and specialist institutions through a system of institutional and individual memberships.
We are dedicated to supporting and championing all those who educate and train the next generation of graduates and musicians through higher education courses in music.
Our aim is to help ensure a healthy and vibrant future for our discipline in what is a challenging time for the arts and humanities across the UK, for music education at all stages, and for the funding of arts and culture more broadly.
We are especially committed to championing music education in all its many dimensions and diversity, with an emphasis on the intersection of musical research, practice, employability and participation, and the different ways in which these are taught and assessed through innovations in music pedagogies.
In promoting the subject in this way, we hope to better communicate the range and diversity of what studying music can consist of, and the range and diversity of musics that can be studied; we are working with our partners to help change and challenge existing inequities so that the diversity of the workforce and student body better reflects the diversity of our subject and our population.
For those working in HEIs we are here to support you and help you to understand where your work fits within a challenging HE environment, and how to advocate and champion the value of what you do locally, regionally and nationally.
If you work in compulsory or extra-curricular music education, we are here to work with you to overcome the hurdles and barriers to musical study in higher education, and to help reinvent the broken model of the music education pipeline.
If you work in a related subject or discipline in HE, we are keen to learn from your experiences and contacts and help build the coalition that is needed to effectively champion what we all do.
If you work in policy we are here to listen and to challenge. We will work with you by representing the views of our sector and to provide you with contacts, research and information that will help to create the policy environment in which music in higher education can thrive across a range of HEIs.
And if you work in the music industry, we want to work with you to ensure that a more diverse range of music and students in higher education becomes better integrated into a more diverse music industry.
But this is not just about the music industry. Music’s place in higher education is not simply to train the next generation of musicians or industry workers, and it never has been. Placed in the broader context of the arts and humanities, the transferrable skills and rounded experiences gained by studying music sustain music graduates for life: you will find music graduates in a wide range of organisations, roles and sectors of the economy.
Music graduates from UK music courses have so much to offer the world, within the music industry and beyond. And it is ultimately our role to ensure that as many people as possible have the opportunity to benefit from musical study in the UK and to contribute towards the future of the discipline globally and its many positive influences in the world.
Dr Roddy Hawkins, Chair MusicHE