Why Carbon Literacy is relevant to music educators

Next month, our bespoke Carbon Literacy course is taking place for the first time. Led by Tina Parsons, Head of Service at MAPAS in Salford, and Gemma Price, Head of Service for Bury Music Service, this course has been designed with music educators in mind. We spoke to Tina and Gemma to learn more about how they’ve tailored the course for the music education sector, and why carbon literacy is relevant to everyone.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the temperature rose by a few degrees! After all, we live in the UK – it’s cold and wet a lot of the time. A mediterranean climate might be quite nice, right?

This is the type of thing we hear a lot in passing, or when we look outside the window on a rainy Tuesday and think back to the balmy evenings on your summer music tour to Spain. But this common misconception is why Carbon Literacy is so important.

Tina Parsons

Allow us to introduce ourselves – we are Tina Parsons and Gemma Price and we will be delivering Carbon Literacy Training for Music Educators on behalf of Music Mark this academic year. Tina is Head of Service at MAPAS in Salford and Gemma is Head of Service for Bury Music Service. We are both Local Lead Partners in the Greater Manchester & Blackburn with Darwen Music Education Hub.

Our journey into carbon literacy began around this time last year, when as a Hub we started to have more and more conversations about sustainability and what we could put in place within our partnership to ensure that we were impacting positively on the road to net zero.

Gemma Price

Gemma had already undertaken some research in this area and suggested that becoming ‘carbon literate’ was the best first step. We both undertook carbon literacy training separately and it is no exaggeration to say it changed the way we live our lives. In fact, we found it so impactful that we decided to train as Carbon Literacy trainers ourselves in order to design and deliver the course within our sector.

The Carbon Literacy Project, who oversee and accredit all Carbon Literacy Training were so pleased to hear from us when we approached them about designing this course. They are passionate about training as many people as possible but they were conscious that the creative sector is often overlooked in these types of initiatives. However, big problems often call for creative solutions, and only by increasing the knowledge and understanding of the issues in all sectors of society are we able to work together on the road to net zero. We are all part of the solution.

Carbon Literacy is important to everyone, because we all live on the same planet and the implications of doing nothing about the climate emergency will impact us all. But sometimes the language used around the climate crisis can be so demoralising that the problem seems too “big” for us to do anything about. This is where Carbon Literacy training helps – we explain all of the complicated terminology in an easy-to-understand way (after all, we’re musicians, not scientists) and we do explain why this is a global concern. But, we also talk about how the climate crisis affects our sector, our services and us as individuals. We talk about practical changes you might want to think about in your own life, and empower you to think about the changes you might be able to make within your organisation which help reduce emissions.

The biggest takeaway message that we’re keen to share though, is that we can’t change everything all at once. We can’t all stop driving our cars and turning vegan and only use renewable energy…we don’t have the infrastructure to handle it if everyone did, and for some people this would negatively impact their quality of life. Instead, it is about giving you all of the information so you can make informed decisions about the changes that you can make, so that future generations of musicians can continue to enjoy making music on our beautiful planet.

Don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity to become certified Carbon Literate and learn how you can take action in response to the climate crisis. This training is available exclusively to Music Mark Members at a heavily subsidised rate, saving up to 50% on costs, and is tailored to those working in the music education sector. Book your place now!