New Music Biennial Evaluation

Project Description

The Hull City of Culture year provided a unique opportunity for researchers to evaluate the musical aspects already scheduled to take place both leading into and during 2017. Outlined below is the research and evaluation exercise that relates directly to the Hull City of Culture year as part of the project. The study is part of a wider £645k project led by the Performing Rights Society (PRS) foundation. It focuses upon two areas: new music in schools; and composer residencies in the city. The study evaluated the impact from both a skills perspective and the psychological well-being of the participants of the study; more details can be found in the questions/aims section below. The University of Hull led the research, with some consultancy from the University of Cambridge, on behalf of the PRS foundation.

This programme evaluation of PRS for Music Foundation’s New Music Biennial (NMB) project was part of the Hull City of Culture in 2017 and will contribute to the evaluation framework established for Hull as well as delivering on PRS Foundation and Sound and Music’s need for research and evaluation which will inform future delivery of New Music Biennial and Minute of Listening (MOL).

The New Music Biennial was established in 2014 as a commissioning festival featuring 20 new works by UK based composers, programmed in an imaginative, free format to attract new audiences to new music. The programme’s impact on audiences was evaluated by the Audience Agency via field research at the two festival weekends.

The New Music Biennial in 2017 has evolved to include a broader engagement programme which brings the NMB into schools via Sound and Music’s Minute of Listening Programme and into a range of different community settings via composer residencies involving NMB composers. Both of these activities will take place before and after the festival weekend (the original emphasis of NMB) which was delivered in July 2017.