Hello!

I'm Founder Director of World Pencil, where I work with organisations and partnerships across England to support arts and creative learning, and to develop harmonious strategies for communities and collaborations. My work involves creative group facilitation, talks, training, strategy development, organisational development, bringing networks of people together, and presenting and communicating complex ideas, with a pinch of fun and some probing questions.

This site is where you can find out about some of things I'm involved with and access publications and materials that I've produced or supported others to produce. Please also have a look at World Pencil.

Research on early years arts and culture in Yorkshire and the Humber, for CapeUK
Where ideas are growing
An international survey of effective practice and evidence of impacts for arts in the early years
Early years arts: international evidence and practice
Futures and futurising - why bother? A post on trends, culture, stagation, education, world challenges and our attitudes for change.
Futures: cultures, trends, forecasts and making it happen yourself
I set up World Pencil in 2015/16. It's a charity and a social enterprise focussing on the coming together of arts, education and sustainable development. 
World Pencil
At the end of 2014, the Musical Progressions Roundtable came together in a 'Progression Panorama' to look broadly at progression-related issues. We worked on what might be a long-term vision for music education...
Music and music education in 2050: where could we be?
Born Creative Together Creating is a campaign supporting parents and carers to nurture their children's creativity through the arts.
Born Creative, Together Creating
Good Questions is a social learning network for online workshops, courses and tools, where people assess their knowledge, understanding and skills together and learn from each other’s experiences and ideas. 
Good Questions
What are the things that get in the way of people fulfilling their musical potential, time after time? This poster depicts some common barriers for musical progression journeys.
Common barriers for musical progression journeys
How do you measure musical progress? A poster depicting the main ways in which musical learners and the people that support them measure and monitor musical progress.
Understanding achievement in musical progression
The Musical Progressions Panorama was the culmination of the Musical Progressions Roundtable, which I run, along with Awards for Young Musicians.
Musical Progressions Panorama
An exploration of what progression looks like in children's musical journeys. (Guest blog for Earlyarts.)
Very few people can be the best, everybody can be exceptional
At a meeting of the Musical Progressions Roundtable in the Spring, we looked at how joined-up support for musical progression is taking place and taking shape across England. CYP leading their own learning, liberating technology, partnership maintenance, Hubs and schools, inclusion, communications... Here's an account of we heard about and what we discussed.
Joined-up strategies for musical progression: what do they look like in practice?
Systems Learning is an online learning resource, for learning about systems thinking, run by the Schumacher Institute.
Systems Learning
Richard Sandbrook's Place is an online platform for deep thinking and big ideas about sustainable development in the modern world.
Richard Sandbrook's Place
A set of ingredients for supporting creative arts in the early years, put together by the Early Years Strategic Roundtable.
Ingredients for creative arts in the early years
Measuring what, with what, and what impact does it have on learning?
How do we measure progress and progression?
A blog about measuring and measurements for progression
How do we provide for progress?
How do you go about successfully engaging young people in music-making?
Starting points for young people: what are the key ingredients for an effective engagement in music making?
There are a many huge reasons why creative arts activity with children in their early years is significant, and why we should support it and get involved. I’ve tried to narrow it down to six…
Why work with young children and creative arts?
The Early Years Strategic Roundtable is a national alliance of organisations supporting creative experiences in the expressive arts for children in their early years.
Early Years Strategic Roundtable: progress update
Recently, I took part in a discussion about the ‘dimensions of music’, which feature in the current English National Curriculum for music and also in the proposed new one.
Alternative dimensions of music
The DfE published a draft proposed new National Curriculum for England recently, covering all statutory subjects for all state schools (except Academies and Free Schools). It could be a fantastic opportunity to influence widespread positive change. Or...
What do you think about the new National Curriculum?
This poster shows the 'ingredients in an environment for progression'.
Progression ingredients poster
This poster depicts an array of core activities that a partnership of organisations could work on together, in order to create excellent environments to support children and young people's progression.
A skeleton strategy for creating progression environments
The Musical Progressions Roundtable is a network of organisations, from right across the breadth of music education, looking at how we could work together to realise all children and young people's musical potential.
Supporting all children's musical progression
Musical Bridges was a Special Initiative of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, with additional funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
Musical Bridges website
This is a guide for people who are producing, or thinking of producing, a resource pack -- in other words, it's a resource pack for making resource packs!
A guide for producing resource packs
The Musical Progressions Roundtable network met in June to look at how we could support Hubs to support children and young people's musical progression.
How could Music Education Hubs most effectively support musical progression: Musical Progressions Roundtable meeting write-up
The Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development Project (MMSD) was an $8million, two-year global project of participatory and consultative research and analysis, seeking to understand how the mining and minerals sector could contribute to the transition to sustainable development.
Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development Project
The SoundJunction website is a rich, immersive musical learning experience, designed for young people to explore, discover and create music.
SoundJunction
The Youth Music Network is an online community for people who work in and around music education in the UK.
Youth Music Network
Between 2009 and 2010 Youth Music pulled together 60 senior music education figures to ask what they considered to be the most important factors in creating music-making opportunities and harnessing music’s potential in young children’s lives.
Early years music-making ingredients
A resource pack offering guidance for young people about navigating the landscape of musical opportunities.
Guidance for young people on finding and choosing opportunities to make music
The Impulse programme has been designed, developed and growing at the Purcell School of Music in Hertfordshire
Impulse young music leadership programme
An interactive visualisation explaining social pedagogy for looked after children
Social pedagogy for looked after children
Leeds Music Passport Project was a young-music-leadership programme supporting Primary--Secondary transition
Leeds Music Passport: young music leadership development
Have you ever seen or developed something fantastic and been frustrated more people didn't know about it?
Sharing effective practice
An interactive visualisation for learning about providing structured volunteering opportunities.
A practical guide to supporting structured volunteering opportunities for young people
A highly popular learning resource for tuning into children's musical ideas.
Tuning into children's musicality - nurturing children's ideas
This collection of research, films and interactive visualisations looks at how some of the UK's top music education ensembles support progression.
How the National Youth Music Ensembles support musical ability
What does potential look like? How can we identify it? How can we support it?
How to spot musical potential
Moving On is a professional development programme for advanced Early Years music making.
Moving on: professional development for advanced Early Years music making
Youth Music is the UK's leading charity supporting music-making opportunities for children and young people, particularly those in challenging circumstances.
Youth Music
The SoundJunction website is an immersive interactive musical learning experience for children and young people.
SoundJunction
Broadly speaking, if you want lots of people to benefit from the effective practice that's developed by a few people, you can either mandate it into policies or you can enable people to adopt, customise and own it themselves.
Spotlighting
The Musical Bridges Initiative, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, is working to help primary and secondary schools strengthen their students' experience of transition in music, and also looking at how music can help with their broader transition.
Musical Bridges
The MusicLeader programme was Youth Music's workforce development programme, building a network of regional offices to support the music education workforce across England.
MusicLeader
The Voltage Programme supported structured volunteering opportunities with young people in challenging circumstances
Voltage Programme
Youth Music Mentors was a programme supporting the development of music-based mentoring with young people in challenging circumstances
Youth Music Mentors
This poster features a model of the complicated musical progression environment, and a diagram of the 'ingredients' in that environment.
Progression environments and ingredients poster
Who, or what, are the different people, organisations, activities and other things involved in children and young people's musical progressions? If you're involved in supporting progression, who could you be working with, what could you looking to harness or mobilise or support?
Agents in the musical progression environment
A resource pack of films, research and insights for anyone working with looked after children and music.
Looked after children and music
What kind of leadership do we need to support musical progression most successfully?
Leadership for musical progression
South West Music School share their approach to encouraging and developing the talent and potential of young musicians, in this collection of films, case studies and practice write-ups.
How does South West Music School support musical ability
'Music-based mentoring' covers a wide range of music-based interactions, focussing on supporting children and young people's whole development (personal, social, emotional) through music.
A guide to music-based mentoring
A network of organisations that worked together to support Early Years music-making in the UK.
National strategic roundtable for Early Years and creative learning
A highly influential network of music education professionals looking together at how musical progression can most effectively be supported.
Musical Progressions Roundtable
Music is wonderful! Children and young people love music. Yet the recent Ofsted triennial tells us that music is really not very good in two thirds of our schools, and that’s against a backdrop of unprecedented effort over recent years to support music education. Put plainly, why are we finding it so hard to get music education right?
Music is wonderful; why is music education so difficult?
What does it take to change practice in supporting creativity? Here are seven pivotal questions to provoke reflection.
7 self-reflection questions for nurturing creativity
How can we create an education now for tomorrow's musical adults at a time with so much change in music, in the creative economy, and in the world at large?
Creating tomorrow's musical adults