By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyse site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information.

View our Privacy Notice.

 Back to organisations
London Symphony Orchestra

Education and outreach is an inextricable part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s DNA. LSO Discovery works at a grass-roots level in some of east London’s most disadvantaged areas, providing children and young people with access to inspiring music experiences.

In January 2018, they launched a new programme called B.A.N.D, Bring a New Dimension, which supports children and young people in east London to overcome barriers to participation in music.

How did they use the Skills Builder Framework?

London Symphony Orchestra are piloting use of the Framework as a way for young people to self-assess where they are at in the two skills of Teamwork and Aiming High when they start on the B.A.N.D programme. The young people will complete this self-assessment again at the end of the programme, enabling the LSO to track the skills-progress made by the young people through the programme.

What's been the impact of using the Framework?

The LSO have long been aware of the impact that music projects can have on young people’s development of the essential skills. However, it has been challenging to evaluate this in a data-driven way, so they were looking for a more rigorous way of evaluating the impact of music on those kind of skills. The Skills Builder Framework may offer this more rigorous approach to the evaluation of their projects.  

How do they plan to use the Framework in the future?

The LSO are looking to continue using the Framework as part of their B.A.N.D. programme so that young people can self-assess where they are at in their Teamwork and Aiming High Skills. As these projects are quite short in time-frame, approximately 10 weeks, they will be looking to use an offline self-assessment document that captures more of the detail within each of the 15 steps per skill.

For a long time we have been very aware of the impact that music projects can have on the kind of skills covered in the Skills Builder Framework. The Framework therefore offers a more rigorous approach to the evaluation of our LSO Discovery projects.

Philip Chandler, Trusts & Foundations Manager

It’s a framework which we can lock ourselves into. It’s a challenge in the arts sector to quantitatively measure the change in these types of skills, even though we know these skills are impacted by our type of work.

David Nunn, LSO On Track Projects Manager

Everyone can go off individually inventing their own framework, but actually to lock into something which is used by schools as well as other organisations, there’s potential there… eventually for a young person to measure their own progress against something which can be matched up with all sorts of different activities.

David Nunn, LSO On Track Projects Manager