Safeguarding Matters is a lab that seeks real innovations and global improvements in safeguarding practices in music education that can shift policies on shelves to cultures of practice and shared ownership. AIM is launching a series of innovation labs to gather diverse voices and experts to explore key innovations that can make a significant difference for young people, teachers, programs and the field.
Common themes arising from our community
Fear – as an inhibitor of change – real-life fear to speak out or whistleblow, and not be believed, to be wrong, to lose a job, to be ostracised, to be sued. A lack of safe spaces for teachers, students and others to share concerns and fears about ‘opening the lid’ on big, difficult and painful issues
Reporting- unclear protocols and channels for referring cases, internally and externally, lack of confidence or understanding about local/national legislation, accountability and action
Physical touch – the need for practical training for the physical nature of music-making, which is comparable to sport. We note that there is more widespread and global policy and practice in the International youth sports field
International differences – challenges of vetting a global mobile workforce, lack of police check records on international staff and differing legal statutes around age of consent, sexual abuse, also leading to widely varying frameworks for addressing abuse
Abuse of power – the power imbalances of the teacher-student dynamic, the deification of artists and the rarified pursuit of artistry as excuses for abuse or for dismissing safeguarding as a boring inhibitor of artistic freedom
Policy over practice- it’s easy to copy and paste a policy and not work it into the fabric of program culture. A lack of youth-ownership, information and training about their rights, and a lack of explicit shared understanding, agreement, buy-in and accountability throughout whole organisations
