Our diversity and inclusion journey
ABRSM exists to inspire a life-long love of music in people from all backgrounds. We are committed to a world in which people are inspired to play, make, and teach music from a rich diversity of traditions and contemporary practice.
Our Diversity and Inclusion Plan
Our Diversity and Inclusion Plan is based on a definition of diversity and inclusion that promotes opportunity for everyone regardless of disability, age, sexual orientation, gender or ethnicity.
There are five areas for action within our Diversity and Inclusion Plan, each of which has the explicit goal of broadening the music we promote, commission, and publish to recognise the richness of diverse music and our global identity, to acknowledge cultural diversity, and composers from every part of society.
Our five areas for action
1. An active commissioning programme
2. Transforming syllabuses
3. A mentorship and development programme for composers
4. Developing partnerships and advocacy
5. Transforming our organisation
Since we launched this Plan in June 2020, we have published regular updates on these areas, both to hold ourselves to account and to provide more details on specific developments and activities against these five key areas. With the launch of our new website in October 2023, it felt like the right time to reassess how we continue to share these important updates and therefore this page will continue to evolve as our journey continues.
Our active commissioning of new works by composers from under-represented backgrounds is key to broadening the diversity of composers and music in our syllabuses and publications
Changes we have made include:
- Making the process of composing for our syllabuses more transparent and accessible
- Developing clearer commissioning guidelines, briefs and contracts
- Clarifying the steps and criteria needed for composers to write music suitable for inclusion in an exam syllabus
- Working with partner organisations to identify composers new to ABRSM
As we progress our Active Commissioning Programme it continues to be our aim that, each year, we will commission a minimum of 20 new compositions or arrangements written by composers from underrepresented backgrounds that may qualify for inclusion on future syllabus lists.
Work to date in this area has included the following activities:
- We commissioned a total of 18 new pieces of music for our Woodwind 2022 syllabus, with a third of pieces written by composers from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds, 61% written by women composers and one piece from a disabled composer
- We commissioned 16 brand new pieces for the Bowed Strings 2023 syllabus. We have also added 120 pieces by female composers and included 47 pieces across all four instruments from underrepresented composers.
- We’ve delivered a range of ‘Writing for Music Education’ workshops, including for an initial 100 composers interested in exploring our commissioning processes, as well as a series of online events via our range of partner organisations
- We commissioned Nikki Iles to curate a new series of books, Nikki Iles & Friends, with almost a third of pieces/arrangements written by composers/arrangers from underrepresented ethnic groups, primarily Black composers
- We celebrate the inclusion of increasing numbers of works written by our composer mentees as part of our syllabuses, more information on this programme can be found below.
The music featured in ABRSM syllabuses is played all over the world and its influence and reach are significant. We recognise that in several areas the music on our syllabuses has not been diverse enough and we now have an established and rolling process that places diversity of repertoire at the heart of all syllabus updates. Syllabuses rely on published music, which is why our Active Commissioning is focused on broadening the pool of published work available from living composers. However, we are also committed to broadening and diversifying the range of existing published music from which we select.
Our Diversity and Inclusion Plan established a commitment to ensuring that, when we commission new music for a syllabus update, 50% of those commissions will be sought from composers who are from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds. In addition, each time we update our syllabuses, our target is that 20% of all syllabus content, including new commissions, arrangements and existing works, will be written by composers from underrepresented backgrounds.
Our digital Performance Grades also represent an opportunity to promote music from diverse cultures and traditions through the free-choice piece element of the exam. This option means candidates can choose music from a much wider range of sources, and to support this we will continue to find, signpost, develop, and publish new work, including in our new series Pop Performer!
In November 2020, we announced a new mentoring and development scheme to support the careers and work of Black and ethnically diverse composers and other composers from underrepresented groups. Since its launch, 18 composers from a wide range of backgrounds, including those with disabilities and those from the LGBTQ+ community, have engaged with the six-month programme, and many more have plugged into various programme offshoots exploring the world of writing music for educational settings. More information about our programme, Writing for Music Education, can be found on our Programmes page under Composer Mentoring Scheme.
Working collaboratively and positively to drive change is key to our Diversity and Inclusion Plan and we place enormous value on the wide range of partner organisations we work with. Our partners are many and varied, and in recent years we have established strong partnerships with organisations that have real expertise and experience in promoting representation of people from underrepresented groups. These include Black Lives in Music, the Ivors Academy, the Musicians’ Union, Open Up Music and many others, all of them organisations with specialist contacts, expertise and the ability to give us the independent support and advice we need as we work towards greater diversity and representation in music education and industry. More information about our partnerships work can be found on our Partnerships page.
We know that our commitment to diversity does not end with the music we publish and promote: it is also central to the way ABRSM as an organisation is run. In 2020 we established our Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, which encourages colleagues from a range of backgrounds, experiences and teams to contribute to our policy and actions across our business, both internally and externally. We continue to provide diversity training for staff across the organisation to address barriers to inclusion.
We actively seek to recruit diverse talent and be clear that our recruitment processes are fair and transparent. While our staff are generally representative of the diversity of the UK as a whole, there remains significant work to do to achieve representation in other areas of our workforce, including our examiner panel, as well as to reflect the diversity of the area of London in which our office is located.
We are recruiting panels of examiners in strategic global locations as well as working closely with our partners Black Lives in Music in support of our work to increase diversity of our freelance examiner panel and will share further updates here as they become available.
There is also further work to do around our governance. We have taken steps to improve the diversity of our Governing Body, as well as drawing on the voices and expertise of our Music Education Advisory Council (MEAC), which plays a vital role in advising the organisation on a range of issues relating to our work and the wider sector.
We also recognise that diversity and inclusion extend to ‘age and stage’ and that the voices of children and young people need amplifying within the organisation. In June 2023 we announced ABRSM’s first ever UK Youth Advisory Board, comprising three age groups covering young people aged 10 to 25, and the first ever Youth Advisory Board meeting took place in September 2023 after a recruitment drive over the summer. The Youth Advisory Board will play a key role in ensuring the voices of young people are heard within the organisation and will feed in through MEAC and an external youth voice consultant.
