Spotlight On Inclusion: Summaries and synthesis of themes

Between spring 2024 and autumn 2025, the Music Education Council hosted six seminars exploring equity, inclusion, and diversity in music education. Each seminar brought together practitioners, researchers, and advocates with lived experience to interrogate barriers in the sector and propose ways forward. The conversations reveal not only systemic challenges but also a remarkable degree of consensus about the role music can play in enabling all children and young people to flourish.

​Taken together, the seminars reveal that inclusion in music education is not a single initiative but a systemic culture – one that recognises difference as a resource rather than a challenge. Equity cannot be achieved by goodwill alone; it requires redesign. From the accessibility of digital platforms to the framing of assessments, from teacher training to curriculum storytelling, inclusion must be built in, not added on.