Access All Areas Dominic Dwight profiles Access to Music, the national organisation helping people of all backgrounds and ages train for careers in the pop music industry If you've heard the recent UK No 1 Take Me To The Clouds Above, then you've heard the effectiveness of training with Access to Music (ATM). The vocals on the LMC vs U2 chart hit were provided by Rachel McFarlane, a former ATM student from Manchester . The same courses at North Trafford College have also produced Jack Mitchell – drummer for chart-storming rock band Haven – and hotly tipped new band Kid Conspiracy.

ATM has been running courses in popular music for 12 years, providing the pop industry with session players, vocalists and many other varieties of musical talent. Originally based and still head-quartered in Leicestershire, the scheme was founded by current director John Ridgeon. As music adviser to the local education authority, he felt music was being delivered in a classically weighted way that didn’t allow for students interested in more popular forms of music. So he formed a company to provide popular-music education in schools as an extra-curricular activity, which soon developed into providing full-time courses for 16-year-old learners.

Recognising that not all musicians wanted to play instruments, ATM then introduced courses to help people interested in technology and developed programmes for vocalists. It also started courses to help experienced musicians gain a teaching qualification.

ATM’s success soon attracted the notice of government. The Department for Work and Pensions engaged Ridgeon’s organisation to deliver the New Deal for Musicians through a Music Industry Consultancy service, an initiative offering unemployed people with musical ability the chance to develop skills needed to secure work in the highly competitive music industry. ATM now has more than 20 centres throughout England delivering courses with partner colleges – such as the one in Manchester with North Trafford – as well as in their own right, aided by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) through the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

More than 2,000 students now study full time with ATM and while the awarding body for teaching programmes stipulates they must be over 18, they could be aged 60. For performance programmes (such as vocal artists, contemporary popular music or creative music through technology), the target age is 16 to 18 – though these still have students aged up to 55.

‘The whole point is that everybody should have the opportunity to learn at all stages of development regardless of their age,’ says Alan Ramsay, head of marketing for ATM. ‘In our London branch, the British Academy of New Music, we were asked by the LSC to pilot a short one-term course for 14- to 16-year-olds. There is a realisation from the DfES that, sometimes, students in schools may not be benefiting from mainstream education. If they are musically minded, there are circumstances where they can be released to ATM and just study with us. It’s vocational training.’

ATM is unique in that it’s national so can bring together students from all over the country.

‘It’s brilliant when you get students from Brighton meeting students from Blackburn who are studying the same course,’ Ramsay enthuses. ‘There are obviously regional variances, which is why it’s so vital to enable our students to do that. It’s all part of our enrichment programme: to take people from the same course who may be from different ethnic or socio-economic backgrounds and say to them “look, you are the same”. It’s a great leveller. The students can learn as much from each other as they can from their tutor teams.’

At North Trafford, Steve Rawlins is programme manager of two ATM courses: one for vocal artists aimed at singers from school-leaver age (16) and up; the other a one-year musician facilitator programme (MFP). Musicians audition for places on the MFP, must display proficiency and have gigging experience. All ATM courses – including vocal artists, contemporary popular music, creating music through technology and the MFP – are free regardelss of age. The course is accredited by the Open College Network.

The approaches to courses, says Rawlins, are ‘very different’:‘With the MFP, we’re looking for more mature musicians and if they’re gigging musicians then they’re pretty self-motivated and have got their own self-management skills. On the vocal artists programme, the majority (about 75 per cent) are school leavers. They can sing but they’ve got no experience of gigging. So we’re giving them performance skills, dance skills, vocal skills.’
The vocal artists programme in particular attracts young people who might have been disenfranchised by the mainstream education system. ‘It's possible that they're not very academic but they've got a love of music,' Rawlins says. ‘We can be dealing with kids who've left school, been watching Pop Idol maybe for the last two years and want to be pop stars but aren't particularly into academic studies – which can pose a problem in as much as we have to guide them a lot.'