Open Up Music is an organisation with a simple but powerful mission: to open up music to young disabled musicians. We work alongside those young people to tackle musical inequality - inspiring new instruments and creating new musical forms for the 21st century. We are looking to recruit trustees to help support the organisation through its next, exciting stage of development.
This academic year, we are providing accessible musical progression opportunities to over 600 of the most marginalised young musicians in the UK. We do this through our award-winning programmes, including Open Orchestras (the largest network of inclusive ensembles in the UK) and the National Open Youth Orchestra (the world’s first disabled-led national youth ensemble). Over the next 5 years, in partnership with some of the UK’s leading arts and cultural organisations, we have plans to increase the scale and geographic range of our programmes.
As a trustee, you will use your skills, experience, and insight to ensure the charity is run in a way that is responsible, effective and meets its legal and statutory requirements. You will help ensure that we deliver on what we say we will do, and use the money we raise as effectively as possible. You will also work with our wonderful staff team to set the future direction of the charity.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the heart of who we are. We take our responsibility to acknowledge, challenge and dismantle barriers within music and our organisation extremely seriously. We know that a key part of this is having a Board that reflects the diversity of the young people we work alongside. To that end, we are only accepting applications from disabled and neurodivergent people at this time.
We recognise that systems of privilege, structural disadvantage and barriers to participation often intersect with one another, and so we welcome applications from disabled and neurodivergent people who are also members of other structurally disadvantaged groups. This may include people from the Global Majority, LGBTQIA+ people, and/or people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
If you need any support to submit an application or feel like you would need support to fulfil the duties of a trustee, please get in touch with our CEO Barry Farrimond-Chuong (he/him) to discuss your individual requirements.