Last week, the Music and Drama Education Expo (MDEE) was held at London’s Kensington Olympia and CLA attended to represent the fantastic Schools Printed Music Licence (SPML) and the Shake It Up competition. Don’t worry if you missed out, this blog will cover all the action!
Over 22 and 23 February professionals from across music and drama education, including teachers, publishers, technology providers and some very talented student performers, celebrated the vibrancy, range and importance of these creative subjects. Our team were there to promote the SPML and raise awareness of all that the Licence can do for music teachers in the UK.
From our stand, we met many delegates and let them know about the Licence. The Licence provides schools with blanket permission to copy and reuse content from printed music by making photocopies and scans, making arrangements and notations, or by sharing the music on a VLE. Currently, all state maintained schools in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland hold the Licence under a national agreement with their respective education governing bodies; state-maintained schools in Wales are licensed by their local authorities, and independents can purchase the Licence. It was great to talk to music teachers about the Licence and show them how it can help gain more access to printed music for their students.
We were also delighted to talk about our Shake It Up competition. The SPML celebrates musical education and believes that it is only through shining a spotlight on how children come to life when they perform music that the importance of a musical education can really be witnessed. Shake It Up invites music teachers who make, or have made, arrangements for pupils, to submit them for the chance to win £700 for the school for which the arrangement was made.
While we are at MDEE, we also sponsored and hosted 'Creatives Corner' sessions. SPML's session, which took place on both days, focused on the 'virtuous circle of printed music in education' - demonstrating the importance of printed music for learning music, and how the SPML supports this while at the same time rewarding composers and publishers for the use of their work. We're so grateful to our main speakers, Emma Coulthard (Head of Cardiff & Vale of Glamorgan Music Service), Tom Farncombe (Director of Product Creation at Music Sales), and Richard Paine (Director of Commercial Rights and Business Affairs at Faber Music). We had some really lively discussions and by the end of the session there was a lot more understanding of the work that CLA does collecting information from schools to inform royalty payments to publishers and composers.
Wrapping up our experience of MDEE, was the wonderful Music Teacher Awards, which celebrates excellence in music and performing arts education. SPML sponsored two awards on the night, Best Print Resource and Best Musical Theatre Education Resource. Congratulations to these winners and all those who took home a prize on the night! We had a great evening recognising the hard work of music teachers across the UK.
Each year, the SPML team visits the Music and Drama Education Expo in London because we believe that a fair and equal musical education for every child is important. The SPML helps to ensure that more children have the opportunity to learn with printed published music and that the music can be made accessible for them through arrangements and notation. Show us what your school has been able to achieve with your SPML and get the chance to win £700 worth of music resources - all you have to do is enter a unique arrangement to our Shake It Up competition.
Forward this page to a friend
