Impacting Music Policy in the Music Industries

Building on the History of Popular Music in Merthyr Tydfil project and the 2011 policy report he wrote on the live music industry in Wales for the Welsh Foundation, Professor Paul Carr commenced a number of initiatives impacting music policy in Wales. The first included a commissioned report in 2018 for Rhiannon Passmore AM on the decline of instrumental teaching in Wales. The report, which was launched at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama with support from supporters such as Sir Karl Jenkins, has consequently fed into Welsh Government thinking about the future of music education in Wales.

This initiative was closely followed by a guest editorship of the journal Popular Music Education, which specifically investigated the popular music landscape in Wales and how it needed to take advantage of Professor Graham Donaldson’s ‘Successful Futures’ report. Information from the collection, which included six academic essays and seven case studies, has been used in Carr’s ongoing discussions as part of Welsh Government’s ‘Music Education Working Group’, in addition to the verbal evidence he has given to the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee Live Music Enquiry. Via Carr’s recommendations in the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee’s Turn up the Volume report (2020), Welsh Government have agreed to ensure that contemporary music is taught in schools in Wales’ new curriculum (Recommendation 13).

Regarding the aforementioned enquiry into live music, as part of a Welsh Parliament Academic Fellowship Scheme, Carr was commissioned in 2020 to document a critical report advising how the live music industries in Wales can recover from Covid-19. This report directly fed into the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee’s aforementioned Turn Up The Volume report, in addition to the Welsh Government’s response.

Off the back of a symposium, which investigated how the music policies of nations across Europe have impacted their respective music industries, Carr is currently working on a double edition of the Journal of World Popular Music, due for publication in 2022.

The four strands of this ongoing project has attempted to transform government policy, by ensuring that popular music is not only included in the Welsh music curriculum, but also assessed appropriately. It has also aimed to offer expert advice to the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee and Welsh Government on how the Welsh music industries can effectively recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.