3 Sharing good practice: Tŷ Cerdd/Music Centre Wales

LAURA HAMER

Welcome, Deborah. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and about Ty Cerdd?

DEBORAH KEYSER

My name is Deborah Keyser, and I’m the director of Ty Cerdd of Music Centre Wales. Ty Cerdd promotes and celebrates the music of Wales. Central to the work that we’re doing is artist development, so working with composers and music creators to support and develop their compositional practices and support their careers. And we also deliver funding for community groups and organisations across Wales, small pots of funding that will create new music and work with young people and put on concerts. And we have a record label, a recording studio, a publishing imprint.

LAURA HAMER

Could you tell me a bit about what you feel are the barriers which people face, which makes it difficult for them to participate or to participate fully within the classical music industry?

DEBORAH KEYSER

I mean, they’re multiple. And they’re intersectional, of course. The classical music industry in particular has had an issue with class, particularly now that there is less free music education. Certainly, I came through a system where it was free at point of use in my schools. And that’s very different now. But that means that the barriers are often steeped in socioeconomic barriers as well as other really clear barriers like being disabled. There are many fewer disabled people working in orchestras. And I think that gender remains a barrier. There’s a lot of work that’s been done in that area, obviously. But there are certain parts of classical music that I say are still dominated by men. And some of that is, I guess, about precedent and the way that the sector works, which it might be harder for people with caring responsibilities. Often, the mother is the primary carer, and often, women have caring responsibilities. So another one that I really should mention is, I guess, cultural. So there might be a barrier to classical music for lots of people.

LAURA HAMER

How do you feel that we can work around these barriers to make the classical music industry more inclusive?

DEBORAH KEYSER

That’s a really complex question. Or the answer is complex. I mean, a very obvious thing as a headline is paying people for opportunities, ensuring that people are not just able to do things if they are privileged enough to be able to afford to be there. And so that’s a really key one. But some of those barriers I was referring to earlier that might be socioeconomic, they might be cultural, or they might be educational, there may sometimes be need for some positive action in those areas. I’ve got a few examples actually. We advertise pathways to composers. And we were finding that for certain sorts of pathways, we were getting many fewer, for example, women, or much less diverse cohorts. And in our conversations with artists, we were finding that people who were neurodivergent or autistic were really feeling that some of our opportunities were not for them. They didn’t feel that was going to be a place that they could feel safe and be able to work. So we put together a pathway, which is called ‘penguin pebbling’, which is a term used in the neurodivergent community for sharing of gifts together. And it was ring-fenced for people who identified as neurodivergent. And that’s taught us an awful lot about the needs of neurodivergent and autistic people and creating a safe space for those people. And those artists were amazing and were brilliant and felt able to participate fully in that pathway. We have actually found that since that pathway, partly because we’d opened the door to them and these artists have become involved with us, they’ve been applying for other stuff that we do. So hopefully, that has helped bring down some barriers. But also, I think for us, it’s helped us understand how we can make our standard pathways, our non positive action pathways more inclusive and accessible. Thinking about education, what we try and do is not talk too much about genre, because artists are coming from lots of different perspectives and artistic experiences, very rarely describing themselves in particular genre terms. But we have found that if there is a notating or more classical pathway, that there are people who are definitely blocked from that if they’ve not had conservatoire or university or post-school composition experience. So we did a pathway called pathway to the orchestra. And it was very much for people who’ve not had that opportunity to study, who have amazing careers and practices as artists, but they have got that barrier to that more classical space, which is the orchestra. So that was a of a training programme. I think we can also be less opaque about what we’re doing. We can be really clear. We can have conversations with our constituencies and help those people be part of devising and identifying what the work we’re doing is. So it’s sort of a less top-down approach and a more enabling-from-within approach.

LAURA HAMER

Thank you, Deborah. That’s really, really interesting. And if we pick up a bit now on application processes, how do you feel we can make application processes for opportunities within the music industry more inclusive and more accessible?

DEBORAH KEYSER

That’s been one of the biggest questions we’ve been asking ourselves over the last few years. We’ve done a lot of work on this, and we’re not there yet, but we’re moving forward. And there were some sort of key principles. And the first one, I guess, is make them free to enter. Never ask people to pay because it’s an immediate barrier. And then if you’re offering an opportunity that’s going to involve people spending time, pay them for that time. Offer reimbursement for that time and for their expenses. Offer accessible formats. We know that there are lots of people who find writing and prose and having to answer questions in text very, very difficult. So we encourage people to apply by video or audio if they would like to. So yes, offering as accessible formats as we can. And making the application process simpler. For people who don’t do it for a living and find some of this stuff difficult, it’s a massive barrier. So don’t ask people to change the world in their application form. Really just help them help themselves. Help them tell you the stuff that they want to tell you. And that includes not adding unnecessary barriers like certain qualification levels. If we’re, if we’re talking about music, we want less to see their CV and what they’ve done and more to hear about their practice, how they describe it and what they’re most proud of. So that’s very much a talking to an artist on their own terms. Be transparent. Always name the panel members and explain the process that’s going to be gone through so that people can understand who’s looking at what and when and who’s going to be making decisions. And a really big one that still remains an issue is, don’t use anonymous selection. That has just continued to firm up barriers, if you like. And I know that there are still lots of processes that use anonymous selection. Why? Because anonymous selection doesn’t give you any more information than what you hear or see on the page. And that hides potential. It doesn’t show how much privilege or how many opportunities that artist has already had. And it also-- and I really believe this-- it enables us to continue to recruit in our own image. So it doesn’t open the aesthetic. It doesn’t allow music to move forwards led by the artists. It enables gatekeeping. So those are those are a few of the things, I think, that can really help application processes become just much more inclusive.

LAURA HAMER

Thank you, Deborah. If we think a bit now about adjustments that we can make to make things more inclusive, what sort of adjustments have you found or do you feel can be appropriate and reasonable and helpful?

DEBORAH KEYSER

I guess, this is sort of broad as the people we’re working with. But reeling back to the penguin pebbling project I was telling you about, some of the adjustments we made there through talking to the people that we were working with, we created a low light, calm, quiet space that people could remove themselves to. And it’s more regular than I ever imagined. And I completely understand why, that people need to leave a space and have another space that they can just be alone. I think that overwhelm is a thing for many, many more people than would even identify themselves. So that’s one quite simple thing to do, have a safe, quiet space that people can go to. Working flexibly and being open and discursive is really, really key here. So those adjustments might be different for different people. So at the very outset, explaining that whatever it is your need is, talk to us about it and named contact who can talk to you about what your particular needs might be. There are many people who have many, many needs. So those conversations help us frame the timetable, make that work for as many people as it can, providing support workers where necessary. Some people do need someone to come along and support them. And that’s a cost. So being really aware of that as music organisations. And helping to cover caring costs. Those are real costs as well. If people can bring babies with them, completely fine as well. And so working around, being much more flexible than, I guess, the music industry is used to being. And of course, making physical adjustments to spaces. Walking in someone else’s shoes or seeing the world through someone else’s lens is a really important thing. So I think the adjustments really come from that conversation at the front. What we do ask for is access riders. And we’ll explain to people what that means. It might be as simple as a phone call or a sentence, or it might be quite a sophisticated document. But those things will help us understand what that particular cohort that we’re working with will need. So yeah. I mean, that was quite a broad and not very specific answer because I think that actually, often, it’s hard to be specific until you know the people you’re working with. But yes. And there will be some very obvious things, like ensuring that the place you’re working with has wider left doors for a wheelchair.

LAURA HAMER

Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Deborah. It’s really helpful answer. So I know that Ty Cerdd has signed up to Sound and Music’s Fair Access Principles. Could you tell us a bit about why Ty Cerdd decided to do that?

DEBORAH KEYSER

Of course. Yes. So Ty Cerdd is part of the PRS Foundation’s Talent Development Network. We’ve been in the network for several years now. And it’s a really amazing network of organisations across the UK that are working in talent development in music, cross-genre. Sound and Music had been sharing with us some of the statistics that they’d been analysing at their end from their pathways and their projects. And they’d been noticing and identifying certain groups and genders that were not being represented in their work as much as others. And so we all, we all came together and started talking about the way that we were running our application processes and the sort of baseline that we were working on. And Sound and Music came up with these principles in collaboration with other people, but they very much Sound and Music’s principles. And some of those things I was talking about with in relation to applications very much identified in those principles. And it came at a time when we were really developing our artists’ development work, trying to become more inclusive, trying to engage with artists who maybe hadn’t had so many opportunities who we’d not worked with before. So this really fitted squarely into that piece of work.

LAURA HAMER

And could you tell us just a bit about what the impact of signing up to this has been for Ty Cerdd?

DEBORAH KEYSER

Absolutely. I mean, the impact has been significant. The principles have been a really, really important part of us moving forward, that artist development. And we had worked together as a team and a board to think about our values and our principles and where we want to go. And these really align with those. They sort of overlay what we’re already trying to do and are a very practical toolkit for making that work more inclusive and for enabling us to work with a broader range of artists. We have this slogan,‘If you’re making music in Wales, it’s Welsh music’, which has been actually really potent, really effective to communicate to people that, really, the doors are open. And so these two things aligned. The principles and that slogan really helped us move forward. Another really important part of the work on the principles has been that sharing with the cohort of organisations that is signed up. So they have been more than the sum of their parts, really. They’ve brought together a whole movement, if you like. And we’re even talking about how the principles can influence us as influencers, can help us advocate for more inclusive practices.

LAURA HAMER

Thank you very, very much, Deborah, for sharing all of your experiences with promoting inclusive practice at Ty Cerdd this morning.

DEBORAH KEYSER

Not at all. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for asking me.