Over the last three years, Making Music – the membership association for leisure-time music – has been funded to support volunteer-led groups to develop their inclusive practices. We’ve created web resources and events for our members so they can build strategies to widen the diversity of members, participants and audiences. And had complex conversations, bringing together organisers and people with lived experience of exclusion so we can together understand how community level amateur music groups can open their doors wider and encourage people who don’t see their groups as ‘for me’ to get involved. As research, we worked closely with four member groups – a choral society, orchestra, promoter and community choir – to plan and try actions that would open up to a wider diversity of singers, players and audiences. At the end of this 2 year process – supported by Critical Friends from Black Lives in Music, OHMI Trust and the University of Sheffield – we are ready to tell our members and the wider leisure time music community what we have learned. We’ll be launching a toolkit of resources for volunteers who organise music groups, based on our learning, at an online event on 26 March. Please join us to hear about the journey of our four INLUDE groups, and what they – and we – have learned about the realistic actions group can take that will really make change happen. Free to attend, live captioned. Book now