Policy into practice: Reframing community music as socially engaged arts practice

Community music in the United Kingdom has often been perceived as operating outside of governmental influence, given its emergence from the 1960s community arts movement. However, this perception is under increasing scrutiny, with several scholars highlighting how community music has evolved through its interaction with policy-making. This article builds on this perception by examining the relationship between community music and cultural policy and the impacts this has had on the field. To consider this relationship, I provide a historiography of community music and cultural policy-making, tracing their interactions. These interactions have given rise to ‘socially engaged arts practice’, an arts practice that funders and policy-makers have adopted to achieve social impact. To illustrate this evolution, I explore a Youth Music-funded programme, examining how funders and policy-makers influence its design, delivery and evaluation, leading to the incorporation of elements of socially engaged arts practice. I reflect on the tensions that these funded models of practice create for the realization of cultural democracy and the grassroots nature of community music. By doing so, I question whether it is time to reframe community music as socially engaged music-making, given its alignment with policies of democratizing culture and top-down programme development models.