AHRC Hub for Public Engagement with Music Research

Funding to create a hub to award, coordinate and support a cohort of four spoke projects across the UK that will engage new and diverse public participants in participatory music research and engagement activities.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) invites applications to become the Hub for Public Engagement with Music Research between 2024 and 2026 to award, coordinate and support a cohort of four spoke projects across the UK that will engage new and diverse public participants in participatory music research and engagement activities that are innovative, inspiring and impactful. The hub will have oversight of all of the projects and will act in a coordinating capacity. The aim of the hub is to:

• Build leadership capacity in public engagement with music research.
• Drive impactful policy engagement and outcomes around music research.
• Support capacity building in public engagement approaches and methods within the hub and across the spoke projects.
• Establish partnerships that lead to knowledge exchange and improved connectivity across sectors.
• Convene and support a cohort of music professionals (eg music researchers, industry professionals, charities, community organisations or music organisations) to influence the outcomes of the spoke projects to maximum success.

Collectively, the aims of the hub and spoke projects will be to:

• Positively impact public participants and communities by delivering public engagement activity that involves people in participatory music research and that fosters connectivity and dialogue among different generations and groups.
• Connect with a range of harder-to-reach and diverse public participants and communities who experience barriers to accessing music.
• Build an evidence base that can influence policy around music, by enabling researchers to respond to urgent policy areas and recommendations from the cultural sector and government.
• Upskill researchers, their institutions and partner organisations to become more confident and creative practitioners of public engagement.
• Make music research more relevant and higher quality by ensuring it is informed by public knowledge and experience.

The hub leadership team is expected to work collaboratively to co-design calls for spoke projects that relate to four umbrella themes, which have been identified from recent areas of policy need and recommendations outlined by the government and the cultural sector in a series of recent reports. The four successful spoke projects must each respond to one of the themes (eg one spoke project per umbrella theme). The four umbrella themes are:

• Health and wellbeing: Research teams should work with the public to explore how music can be used to grow a healthier population and enhance wellbeing.
• Civic and cohesive communities: Music plays an important part of individual and collective identities, heritage, pride in place and how communities develop, self-identify and connect with one another over time.
• Creative education: Creative skills are integral to the growth of the creative industries and developing a robust and diverse talent pipeline into the music industry. Research teams are invited to work with the public to develop curriculum-informed schools engagement or engagement with young adults that will boost the pipeline, grow skills, educate people in ways of critically listening and examining music, and forge connections between research organisations and local schools, FE colleges and other civic partners.
• Technological innovation: Research teams are encouraged to work with the public to explore what new technological innovations might mean for the ways music is made and consumed.

Music is generally regarded as being universally loved, however, it is not universally accessible. Participation in music is not readily available for everyone due to poverty, discrimination, disability, physical or mental health conditions, or local infrastructure. Within both the hub and spoke projects’ activities, there should be a strong commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).