Discover our Training & Events for Spring 2025!
16th October 2024
Join us in Spring 2025 for our exciting programme of training and events! With sessions designed for professionals in leadership roles, supporting roles, and teachers, there are plenty of opportunities to develop your skills and how you support and work with young people.
Read on to discover our training and events for the upcoming spring term to help you enhance your music education practice.
Supporting Music Education Professionals
13th January | Supporting music professionals in becoming more confident in using Excel
Do you work with Excel and data in your role? This engaging, hands-on 90-minute Zoom session will be for you if you need to build confidence in using spreadsheets. We’ll cover how to input your data, how to sort and filter information, how to manage data across different sheets in a workbook, and how to control data through data validation. This new date has been added due to popular demand, and spaces are limited.
21st January & 25th February | Finance Fundamentals
Delve into the essential financial principles crucial for any organisation, with valuable insights, practical tools and resources in this six-part course. This course started in September 2024, but entrance partway through the series is permitted, and you will have access to recordings of the previous sessions. Sessions include ‘Streamlining processes for accurate financial records’ and ‘Accounts Essentials’. Equip yourself with the knowledge to handle all key financial operations smoothly and efficiently.
20th & 27th March | Mental Health First Aid with Soundcastle
We all have mental health – it affects our psychological, emotional and social wellbeing. Anyone can be affected by a mental health condition, either because they are experiencing difficulties themselves, or through supporting a family member, friend or colleague. On completion of this course, you will be qualified as a First Aider for Mental Health. The FAA Level 2 Award in First Aid for Mental Health (RQF) will provide you with the knowledge to recognise a suspected mental health condition and the skills to start a supportive conversation as well as signposting a person towards professional help.
20th January & 19th March | Climate Conversations
Our Climate Conversations provide an opportunity for colleagues across the UK music education sector to discuss how they are getting involved in This Is Not A Rehearsal, and raise ideas or challenges surrounding their work and the climate crisis. Upcoming topics are:
- 20th January | Business Management and Digital Sustainability
- 19th March | Climate Justice
Developing your support for young people
Led by Jo Brassington, build your confidence and awareness around gender diversity in educational spaces.
8th January & 2nd July | Growing Trans & Non-Binary Awareness
We’ve teamed up with Diverse Educators to deliver a two-part course on Transgender and Non-Binary awareness, to help people finding confidence in understanding, supporting and making space for Gender Diverse people. This two-part course will support you in sharing the lived education experience of LGBT+ gender diverse people, becoming conscious of the additional barriers gender diverse young people may face in schools, and more.
4th February | Understanding the Values Perception Gap – helping young people find their shared values
We live in an uncertain world where change is constant, and global issues like climate change, nature loss, poverty, and injustice weigh heavily on both adults and young people. As awareness of these challenges grows, so does the desire to take action and create a fairer, greener world. Research by Global Action Plan found a ‘Values Perception Gap’ in young people: believing that others do not care about social and environmental issues when actually they do. This session aims to help you understand this gap, how to close it, and its impact on young people’s well-being.
5th March | Taking Trauma-Informed Approaches
In the second session of this two-part course led by Diverse Educators, you will develop an awareness of trauma responses, become conscious of the factors that cause trauma, reflect on the impact that prejudice and discrimination can have on an individual, and more. A recording of the first session will be made available for you to watch in advance of this live session.
Supporting Teachers
School and Classroom Teachers
Join Jenetta Hurst as we take a deeper dive into key areas of classroom teaching.
15th January | How to Advocate for Music as a Subject – The Secondary Music Teaching Series
How can we ensure a rich programme of extra-curricular music-making amidst the backdrop of staff retention challenges in the UK? What stays and what goes in your programme? To what extent are you considering staff wellbeing and engaging the full support of your school leadership team to give all students the best experience? Learn how to advocate for your subject in secondary schools with Jenetta Hurst as part of our Secondary Music Teaching Series.
26th February | Embedding Diversity in your Music Teaching – The Secondary Music Teaching Series
Who drives representation of composers, performers and artists on your curriculum? To what extent are you inspiring students and taking an inclusive approach that puts students at the centre of planning? There are many opportunities and some potential barriers to ensuring the curriculum is diverse, decolonised and that our practice is adapted where necessary. We will be posing some of the big questions and working through potential solutions, collaboratively.
17th March | T-Time
T-Time is a termly discussion session exclusively for classroom music teachers to talk about their current teaching practice, focusing on a different topic each term. Facilitated by Music Mark’s Schools Manager, Abi Marrison, T-Time is an opportunity to reflect and learn from colleagues across primary, secondary and SEND settings across the UK and discuss hot topics affecting music education in schools. The topic for T-Time’s Spring term discussion is yet to be finalised and we are always keen to choose a topic suggested by teachers. If you have a topic you’d like to suggest, please get in touch.
Instrumental and Vocal Teachers
24th March | Peer Group: Instrumental and Vocal Tutors
Our Peer Groups allow people across the UK to connect, discuss and learn from people with similar roles within the music education sector. Uniquely for our Peer Group meetings, this session is open to non-members as well as members. Therefore all instrumental and vocal teachers are welcome – whether you’re working for a hub, service, school or as a self-employed or freelance teacher!
Coming Soon
As well as these fantastic events, we are planning on running another Carbon Literacy Training course, a session with Rachel Wolffsohn, General Manager at The OHMI Trust, and a webinar on Environmental Sustainability in Finance. We are also working with ABRSM on two events which will take place in spring, including a Meet the Chief Examiner fireside chat and Exploring ABRSM Voices. Complete this form to be notified as soon as bookings open!
We’ll also be running our Spring Summit for UK Music Services, so keep an eye out for more details coming soon.
Peer Groups, Mentoring and Coachings
Our peer groups, mentoring and coaching opportunities are available all year round exclusively for Music Mark Members! At no cost to you, you can take advantage of a range of facilitated peer groups to meet colleagues in similar roles across the UK for peer-to-peer learning and problem-solving, as well as six hours of mentoring or coaching from our trained mentors and professional coaches to support your professional development.
Don’t forget to visit our Training & Events page to see our full range of events taking place this year as we regularly programme events in response to need, as well as signposting to other events across the sector. Or, sign up for our monthly Training & Events newsletter to keep up to date with the latest music education events and training opportunities from us and our partners across the sector.
