With my colleagues Lee Higgins (University of York St John), Nikki-Kate Heyes (SoundLincs), Antonella Coppi (Free University of Bolzano) and Emily Achieng’ Akuno (Kenyatta University, Nairobi) I am engaged in a research project to assess and if possible increase the social impact of community music activities. Our proposed research questionnaire and other materials related to our research can be inspected on our project website, poverty.group.shef.ac.uk.

As our research has proceeded it has come to light that there does not exist, so far as we are aware, a proper database describing the operations of the UK community music sector – in the sense of what kind of music it teaches and performs, where it is located, and, particularly important for our purposes, what social inclusion work it does. Some of you will of course have provided information of this kind for particular funders, such as Youth Music, but there does not seem to be any sort of factsheet covering the sector as a whole; hence this initiative. Please note that at this stage we are asking for information from community music groups and not from individuals.

Therefore we have designed a questionnaire – available to download below – and we invite you to fill it in if you are a group member or leader within the Sound Sense family and have ten-fifteen minutes to spare (it is very simple and we do not think it will take you longer than this). By doing so we believe that you will provide the sector with an important asset which will enliven the work of the entire community music profession.

Please send your completed forms by post to me at the Department of Economics, University of Sheffield, 9 Mappin Street, Sheffield S1 4DT; or by email to p.mosley@sheffield.ac.uk.

With thanks and best wishes, Paul Mosley