IMPACT

Over 25,000 young people. One simple belief: every child has a song inside them.

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Since our founding in July 2011, The Songwriting Charity has worked face-to-face with more than 25,000 children and young people across England, Wales, and beyond — from primary classrooms in Kent and Essex to specialist SEND schools in Gloucestershire, from young offenders institutions near Woolwich to dementia choirs in Preston, from NHS mental health settings in Cambridge to community summer schools in Greenwich.

 

In our second year alone we worked with 4,000 children between January and July; by year three we had taken our work to Italy (Milan and Bari); by year four we were delivering over 241 workshops annually and had recorded 1,100 original songs.

 

Across our 14-year history we have delivered well over 1,300 workshops and mentoring sessions. We've kept going - every single year, including through a global pandemic that wiped out £28,500 of bookings overnight in February 2020.

 

In our most recent years, we have worked with over 1,700 children annually, delivering more than 60 full-day school workshops and 150 individual mentoring sessions in a single year. Every song written is a small act of courage; every performance, a moment of pride.

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The evidence for what music can do is written in the data — and in the faces of the children we work with. In our founding-year evaluation, 96.6% of teachers and headteachers rated our work as outstanding, 93.1% of programme objectives were met, and 82.8% of educators observed a positive change in pupil behaviour. By 2013/14, 98.28% of teachers were extremely satisfied and 100% said they would recommend us to another school — and 100% said our work helped them evidence Pupil Premium spend.

 

Across our Bully Beat programmes, children have shown average confidence shifts of 23.2%, a 40% reduction in those who would ‘revenge bully’, and a 27% increase in those who believe telling an adult works. In Southend alone, the proportion of children who would ‘do nothing’ about bullying fell by 52%.

 

Our songs have been streamed over 138,000 times on SoundCloud, released on iTunes and Spotify, and performed at the House of Lords. In 2012, our Songwriting Marathon — involving 120 schools and 3,500 children — earned the prestigious London 2012 Inspire Mark and a YouTube UK editorial spotlight on the opening day of the Olympic Games. By 2014/15, our four years of work had produced 1,100 original songs and 96 music videos, with 75,000 SoundCloud plays in that year alone.

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Our programmes meet young people where they are — including those who need us most. Bully Beat has reached thousands of children across Kent, Essex, London, Gloucestershire, Bristol, Warwickshire and beyond, using songwriting to help them process and articulate their experiences of bullying.

 

Something Kind has shifted attitudes toward kindness in hundreds of classrooms. Encore has brought songwriting into addiction and domestic abuse recovery settings.

 

Connections has given dementia sufferers a voice — including John Holt, whose lyrics became the first song written by a dementia sufferer to be released on Spotify. Project K took ten primary schools in Cardiff, Barry, Penarth and the Rhondda Cynon Taff to the Millennium Stadium; Master Peace reached disadvantaged young people in Milan and Bari.

 

Our Harmonious Minds pilot at Nexus Foundation School combined songwriting with music therapy for pupils with complex Special Educational Needs — “We have seen students vocalise and perform in ways that they have never done before,” said Head of School Scott Jarred.

 

Our NHS one-to-one mentoring project has supported young people’s mental health through creative expression, continuing beyond its original grant funding because the need — and the results — were simply too important to stop. Across 17 named programmes and counting, we have never stopped finding new ways to use music as a force for good.

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Fourteen years on, The Songwriting Charity remains a small organisation with an outsized heart. Our income peaked at £262,893 in 2014/15 — a year in which we delivered over 241 workshops and produced 96 music videos. We have been recognised with the London 2012 Inspire Mark, and in October 2016 our founder Nathan Timothy received the Ivors Academy Gold Badge of Merit — awarded alongside Sir Karl Jenkins, Dame Cleo Laine, Sir Ray Davies, and Janice Long — “for inspiring and empowering a whole generation of children and young people through music.”

 

Supported by patrons including Guy Fletcher OBE, FRSA (Chairman of PRS, from our very first year) Music Prouder and ground breaking technologist Rupert Hine (who joined in 2012) and Sir Ray Davies CBE (founder of The Kinks, who joined in 2017/18), and trusted by partners from Dartford FC Community Foundation to the Cambridge Centre for Paediatric Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, the Womad Foundation, and the National Foundation for Youth Music, we have sustained our work through grants, commissions, and the extraordinary generosity of supporters who believe in what music can do.​