Many of you will be aware that there has been a national restructure of Music Hubs ongoing for the last couple of years. This process is now nearing its completion and the new hubs will be in place from September. The Music Hubs (including LMEP) have a number of roles, one of them being to receive funding from the DfE via Arts Council England. This is the money which is largely used as cashback and bursaries in order to subsidise music delivery from ArtForms and other hub partners.
Around a year ago it was announced that 5 current nearby hub areas (Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Kirklees and Calderdale) would be combining to form one large West Yorkshire Music Hub. Organisations were invited to tender to be the new Hub leads and the 5 current area hub leads worked together to submit a joint bid in the Autumn. Currently, we are still waiting to hear whether that bid has been successful and we expect to find out in April according to the government’s timeframe.
What this means for us in practice is that until we receive word that we have been successful in our bid, we are unable to be 100% sure about our LMEP offer for schools for next year. Usually by now, we would have released our LMEP offer for 24/25. We hope and expect that it will stay the same, retaining current levels of cashback subsidies but until we receive that final confirmation, we are unable to publish it in the usual timeframe.
For now, we ask that schools go ahead and book music provision on Leeds for Learning as usual for next year based on current levels of cashback and bursaries. We will then issue a quote as usual for the work based on next academic year’s prices. In the highly unlikely event that there is a change in the cashback levels for next year following the announcement in April, we would then contact all schools and they would have the option to adjust their booking as necessary. Thank you to all for your understanding in this matter, we will keep you updated as and when we hear any new information.
Lee Muncaster, Senior Curriculum Leader, ArtForms
