The wealth divide in the UK is the biggest it has ever been, so what does this mean in terms of accessibility for future generations of potential musicians and audiences? Is it a class issue, a culture issue, or a failure of the state by diminishing arts education down to nothing over the last 15 years? While the issue is complex, simply put it is a mix of all three.
As someone who attended a state school, I do feel impassioned about accessibility to music in state education. The only music I got in primary school was singing in a Tuesday assembly, and very rarely the percussion trolley could make an appearance once every 5 years. Jump to secondary school and the arts subjects are seen as a doss, something not to be taken seriously, and why would they if nobody has any appreciation of them to begin with? A lot of schools see them as third-rate subjects and are the first to go if budgets deem it necessary, because forcing children to avoid being creative and instead focus on maths has worked out amazingly so far…
The lack of arts education in state schools is diabolical, there is no question about it. Schools just don’t have the budgets to fund music lessons for all their pupils, in some cases any at all. I work in some schools that fund group instrumental lessons for one year, 30 minutes a week for 30 weeks. And then that’s it, no more music lessons in school. Although an extreme example, that is the availability of instrumental learning that some children in the UK have access to right now and it is simply not right. There is not the option to continue learning even if they want to, and for many children learning in school is their only option.
Stifling children’s creativity and interest in the arts at such an early age has serious knock-on effects down the line. It discourages experimentation and the curiosity to make something new and hinders their own self-development as they do not have an outlet in which to express themselves. It isn’t about whether they become a musician later in life or not, it’s about the opportunity to understand and appreciate what it means to make music and be allowed to be creative and expressive, something that will benefit and have a lasting impact on their lives regardless of what they do.
Who can truly argue between the opportunities a child has who has access to private music lessons from the age of 5 has who could learn more than one instrument, piano and violin say, to that of a child who is having their first opportunity to learn an instrument at the age of 9 in a school, but is unable to progress to see their full potential because their parents can’t afford for them to go to their local music centre for £50 a term. Do they really have the same chance of enjoying/appreciating classical music in any form in the future, let alone being able to become a professional musician? No, they do not.
So why should it only be those with more money that deserve the opportunities for their children to create more chances for success in the music industry? There is a reason why classical music is perceived as elitist – because it is. The cost barrier of specialist tuition at junior departments and schools alone is enough to make any middle-income parent weep. Yes, there are bursaries in place so nobody is excluded, but preface it with high costs for decent instruments and all the tuition to get there in the first place; how are middle and lower income families supposed to compete to even get to that position, let alone afford the fees to go to such schools? Competitions like BBC Young Musician, whose final last year lacked any state education representation, proves this point. How can lower-income children be given the chance to be the best and propel themselves into success if they have restricted access into the arts to begin with.
So the government needs to do more to better fund arts education, same old story. But there is the wider cultural issue of large swathes of the population having little interest in the arts, or certainly not classical music by any stretch. Like millions of others, my parents did not learn an instrument in school nor do they listen to classical music (other than my concerts). Children are of course heavily influenced by their parents; I grew up listening to Queen and watching westerns and war films on a weekly basis. If your parents were not exposed to classical music growing up nor have any appreciation for it, why would you?
The first piece of classical music I ever listened to was Shostakovich Symphony No. 8 when I was 15, a bold choice for sure but I was a troubled teenager. The only way to listen to that kind of music was through YouTube as living outside of a city in a village does limit your choices for live classical music, especially when the nearest orchestra is an hour’s drive away. Unless you are in the know, it is almost guaranteed that you will not know of any concerts nearby.
There is a London-centric view from audiences, funders, and musicians alike that it is the best place to be, and the regions are sometimes overlooked or even looked down upon. While London and the South does generally hold more opportunities for work, the North/South divide makes accessing classical music more difficult than it needs to be.
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