Associate Bulletin Board

Information for Schools and Associates – 13th June 2025

We have produced a booklet to help schools and Associates understand how schools can apply for First Access and tuition bursaries and how to order a set of musical instruments for the school Download  HERE

ACE Announcement Friday 23^rd May

“[Hub funding]…programme will receive standstill funding for the remainder of the financial year 2025-2026 – from September 2025 to the end of March 2026.

ACE will issue the draft supporting documents soon.ACE is waiting to receive the specific allocations for each Music Hub – as soon as they have them, they will share them with us. ACE say: we hope it’s useful to also take this opportunity to confirm the improvements we’ve made to our process. These are based on Hubs’ feedback, and aim to help ease the administrative burden for this coming year’s funding:

• ACE won’t ask the Hub to submit a full, updated Local Plan as a payment condition during 2025-26, and they don’t expect all of it to be in place for September 2025
• ACE will make five payments instead of six. For stability, there will still be payments in September, November, January, April and June. But the March payment you received this year has been absorbed into the January payment for 2025-26, so you’ll receive 25% rather than 16.67% of your total allocation in January 2026

Funding from April 2026 onwards is subject to the ongoing Spending Review.”

For those funded organisations, we will contact you separately after the half-term once we now more details about the settlement for your funding up to March 2026.

New Website

Subject: New Website Now Live – Enhanced Resources for Associates

I’m pleased to announce that our new website is now live and available for your use. While we have included sufficient content to launch publicly, please note that we will continue developing and updating the site weekly, so I encourage you to visit regularly for the latest features and information.

Annual Returns Hub for Wiltshire Associates

We have established a comprehensive one-stop resource centre containing all the documentation you need when presenting your services to schools. This centralised location includes: • Annual Data Return (with guidance) • Annual Declaration (both individual and organisational) • Annual Financial Data Return • Annual Ethnicity Return

You may complete these forms at your convenience, though we will continue sending periodic reminders as usual.

Supporting Documentation

The website features a dedicated section containing documents to support your outreach efforts with schools. I particularly recommend reviewing the “What’s on Offer to Wiltshire Schools” section, which details the services and benefits schools receive through our programs.

Live Online Bulletin Board

To keep you informed of developments in real-time, we have implemented a live bulletin board on the website. While we will continue sending email communications, we aim to reduce email frequency by utilizing this dynamic online resource for timely updates.

Virtual Coffee Meetings

Thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s Virtual Coffee meetings. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and attendance exceeded our expectations. For those unable to attend, the PowerPoint presentation is now available on the new website.  You can access the pdf in the passworded section.

Given the success of these sessions, we will continue offering Virtual Coffee meetings as part of our ongoing communication strategy.