We’re evolving our career development support
Musicians’ needs have changed, so we’re changing to meet them
Our current support towards music development will no longer be taking applications from Friday 26 January while we take a few weeks to change our services.
The findings of the 2023 Musicians’ Census revealed how challenging it is to be a musician today. Musicians are now juggling an average of three roles in music and facing a lack of structured career support, especially for the majority who are freelance.
Competition for our support has greatly increased in recent years. As a charity with musicians at our heart, we want to help as many as we can and are therefore evolving our support to meet a more diverse range of musicians’ needs.
This starts with providing easier access to support. Long application forms can be a barrier, and we need to provide more varied ways for people to access help in order to be a charity for all musicians.
We are therefore changing our services so that a wider pool of musicians are able to access our support more easily than before. This new support will be available from April 2024.
Our new support will reflect the need to prioritise long-term, sustainable career development, in response to not only the Census but also from the learnings from the many thousands of applications we receive every year.
In the coming months we will provide further details on what this new career development support will look like. Sign up to our mailing list below to receive updates on this.
FAQs
Quite simply, to meet a more diverse range of musicians’ needs.
Demand for our creative and career development support has grown exponentially over the last few years, to the stage where we are only able to support 1 in 5 applications.
The changes we’re making are based on consultations with many musicians and partners, the insights gathered from our 2023 Musicians’ Census, and the overview of need we saw from thousands of applications last year.
We expect our evolved offer will allow more musicians to receive the support they need to build a career in music.
We are very excited to share details of our new support and how to access it.
New support will include:
Micro-development grants, giving musicians at any stages of their career a boost at the right moment to push them forward
Career development support, supporting musicians to build a career in music with financial support of up to £3,000 for music activities, business advice with an industry expert and online peer networking opportunities
Dance music career accelerator, to promote equity in dance music, including financial support of up to £3,000, peer-support and advice from industry experts
There will also be more opportunities to gain insight and advice from our network of industry experts.
There’s much more to be announced. Please sign up to our mailing list to find out first about what’s coming.
Yes. Most of our support will continue as normal.
Please follow the links below to find out how you can access this support:
This pause gives us the chance to process all outstanding applications , and the time to roll out our new support.
We appreciate that this may disappoint people planning to apply in February or March, but we are hopeful that the changes we are making will help to meet a more diverse range of musicians’ needs.
Remember that most support from Help Musicians will remain unaffected (see above).
Please sign up to our newsletter to find out first about all our new services.
From Friday 26 January 2024 we will no longer be taking applications for our Touring and Live, Record and Release or Skills Development funds.
Whilst these specific funds will no longer be available, support for musicians to record and release new music, develop their skills and take their music to the stage will still be available in our evolved support offering, available from April.
Please sign up to our mailing list to find out more about this support as and when we announce it.
Unfortunately, we will be unable to process any applications that come in after the closure date, so if you are intending to apply then please do so before the deadline on Friday 26 January 2024.
Not at all.
If you have already received a financial support offer from us for a creative activity, then the support will continue as planned.
As always, if you have any questions about the support you are receiving then please contact support@helpmusicians.org.uk