Guidance

Understanding how the demographics of your members or audiences compare to the make-up of your geographical community can be helpful when planning your strategy, performances, or community engagement plans.  

We have created a census comparison survey to help leisure-time music groups collect data from people who belong to your group, or attend your events, so you can directly compare it to the UK government's Census 2021.  

Traditional concert environments are not always the easiest places for people to come in, but by thinking creatively we can remove many of the barriers that stop people being able to come.

This agreement, reached between the Musicians' Union and Making Music in 2017, and updated in 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2023, provides guideline minimum rates for groups when engaging freelance professional musicians. We hope that this will provide a simple and effective aid to ensure that members are able to budget for, and professionals able to receive, a fair rate of payment.

We are very pleased to have renewed our agreement with the Musicians’ Union which is now in its sixth year.  

At the heart of your music making is the people, whether that's members, potential members or audiences. But if you're struggling to attract new people or keep your current people engaged, could there be barriers that you're unaware of?

Use the resources below to review and make the changes you need to welcome more people.

These resources aren't exhaustive, and we're constantly reviewing, updating and adding to them. We would be happy for you to contact us with suggestions. 

This page forms part of the Making Music Platform help guides for existing users of the Service. On this page you will be able to view video guidance to help you use a range of functions and aspects of your Platform. The video guidance below should be used alongside the written help guides. 

All of the Making Music Platform help guides and latest Platform News can be found on the MM Platform Service Hub page.

On this video guidance page you will find the following videos:

Our fourth meeting in our Climate Network series (original event 4 July 2023) saw contributions from the Scottish Classical Sustainability Group speakers, providing inspiration on what music groups can do to improve their sustainability, and also introduced the new Making Music Green Award.

The speakers for this event were:

Booking professional musicians can be financially challenging for many leisure-time groups. Making Music offers members specially reduced or subsidised rates to make booking and engaging artists more affordable.

Philip and Dorothy Green Young Artists subsidies

The Philip and Dorothy Green Young Artists (PDGYA) scheme enables young musicians at the start of their careers to gain vital performance experience across the UK, while Making Music members can engage some of the very best young musical talent at a reduced cost. 

Finding new members for your group requires commitment and effort over a prolonged period of time. So, once they have joined, it’s important they keep coming. This resource looks at what you can do to make sure your members stay engaged and happy in your group.

Contents:

Recruiting new members is the biggest challenge leisure-time music groups face. Unfortunately, this is not an exact science and there are no quick fixes, but there are some improvements you can make. Work your way through this five-part toolkit to help you build a recruitment strategy, starting with thinking about who you want to recruit.

The joining journey

When someone joins, it is probably due to a combination of multiple circumstances and influences that could take place over days or even years.

There are many circumstances that might prompt someone to join a music group. Understanding how people find you and what might be getting in the way of joining is key information for helping you build a new recruitment strategy.

How do people join?

Before you start telling the world what you offer and asking them to join you, it's worth considering what will happen when they do.