Developing Organisational Resilience: A Guide for Music Education Hubs

A guide for Music Hubs by Nigel M Taylor, commissioned by Music Mark and supported by Arts Council England, as part of Music Mark’s wider Leadership Development Programme.

The education sector has not witnessed such turbulence as in recent times, from the continuing growth of schools’ autonomy, through fragmentation of schools’ constitutional arrangements, ever-increasing accountability measures, reductions in curriculum provision, difficulties in workforce recruitment, retention and downward financial pressures on schools and families. The cumulative impacts on music education in schools, and especially in the work of music education organisations, have been wide-ranging and continue to provide a number of challenges.

Music Mark, supported by Arts Council England, has commissioned this guide by Nigel M Taylor particularly for the lead organisations of Music Education Hubs, and it is hoped it may also be helpful for a range of delivery partners. It is part of a larger programme of training and support, focused on organisational resilience, and especially financial resilience, to enable colleagues to consider how they might meet the challenges borne of this turbulence now and in the future.

Two supplements to Nigel M Taylor’s Developing Organisational Resilience documents were released in 2020.

In light of the unprecedented challenges to “normal” ways of working, thinking and planning,
brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, the brief for this supplement was to:

• Offer some thoughts to music education organisations on dealing with the “now”
• Discuss an emerging trend, and some associated issues
• Set out a few thoughts on the future
• Remind colleagues of the original Organisational Resilience document

The supplements cannot, and will not, pretend to be comprehensive. Instead, the can only be a
snapshot-response to a brief set in the most fast-paced of changing scenarios and challenges. Its
contents are, for the most part, common sense. But its intention is to try to be helpful in these most turbulent of times.

Arts Council have funded Supplement #2 (July 2020) to support Hubs in creating their business stabilisation plans.