Supporting young people to feel safe and included is central to grassroots music projects’ work. Yet safeguarding can often seem to be more about compliance, with generic policies and box ticking measures. Something that’s far removed from the day-to-day practices of providing a welcoming space, listening and learning from young people, and promoting everyone’s wellbeing. Here, Gawain Hewitt reflects on how he’s come to understand safeguarding as part of his day-to-day creative work and provides some top tips to close the gap between safeguarding policy and practice.

Explore this list of youth voice in research and evaluation.

Jazz music, from its smooth grooves to its quirky chord patterns, is one of the most popular genres of music in the western world. Yet, it is often seen by younger music learners as a musical style that is hard to "get into". With pop and rock music so readily available, jazz, which students often comment as being a "more sophisticated" style of playing, is sometimes seen as aloof or worse still, hard to understand.

A collection of some recommended training and resources on the topic of youth voice.

Youth Music spoke to Sharon Jagdev Powell, Deputy Head of Leicester-Shire Schools Music Service, to find out about diversity and inclusion practice within the service. With a 25-year background in education, Sharon has worked in a broad variety of environments, challenging instances of institutionalised racism and lack of representation. She shares examples of how her service has evolved its approach to equity and inclusion, with advice on where to start and where to go next.

So you want to know how to become a guitar teacher?

Jack Kingslake is the Mentoring Coordinator at Rhythmix and since taking on the role finds that the question of what exactly a music mentor is, is one he finds he has to attempt to answer on a regular basis. Jack has worked for many years as a music mentor, and was trained through the original Youth Music Mentors programme but still finds the line between tutor and mentor a bit blurry.

Social media has become increasingly important for musicians over the last decade, both as a tool for building an audience and as a way to prove you're worth investing in. But once you've got an audience eager for your content, how can you turn that into continuous investment? Previously, the true value of a fanbase lay in local communities and networks which could then be expanded worldwide into chart-topping albums and sell-out tours; now, musicians are finding ways to monetise sprawling online communities. From crowdfunding to streaming, here are just some of the ways musicians are turning the internet into an income.