Rehearsal Spaces as Children’s Spaces? Considering the Place of Non-formal Music Education

Abstract

This chapter contributes to research on the geographies of informal education through a focus on a model of non-formal music education advanced by the work of the National Foundation for Youth Music (Youth Music), a charity working with children and young people in England. Significantly, while this model differs from formal music education in its concern for musical learning beyond the school curriculum (generally considered as formal music education), it also differs from many of the current theoretical descriptions of informal education, which tend to focus on unstructured activity occurring in and around formal contexts of school or work (Coffield, 2000; Bekerman et al., 2005), or ad hoc ways in everyday life (Richardson and Wolfe, 2001). Despite being implemented within highly organised national and regional infrastructures by a range of third, public and private sector partners, and impacting on the lives of many thousands of children and young people each year in England alone (Lonie and Dickens, 2011), the role of such non-formal educational provision is yet to be fully taken into account within a renewed interest in the geographies of childhood, learning and education (Hanson Thiem, 2009; Holloway et al., 2010).