Focus on Music - Wednesday 18th October, 10am - 10.45am
Focus on Music - Wednesday 18th October, 10am - 10.45am
There has never been a better time to choose a career in the music industry, it creates over 140k full time jobs in hundreds of different roles and is growing all the time. For every artist you see on stage, there are hundreds of people behind the scenes - from tour managers, technicians, engineers, promoters, lawyers and many more.
Delivered by Discover Creative Careers and UK Music, this free online event, aimed at learners aged 11 to 18, features a video games composer, a music producer and a business leader, all working in their dream jobs across the music sector.
We'll hear more about the types of roles that underpin this globally renowned sector and understand how people get into them, with advice on vocational pathways including apprenticeships.
Panellists:
Dr Oliver Morris, Director of Education & Skills at UK Music
Bre McDermott-King, International Product Manager at AWAL
Chloe Kwok, Musician & Composer at Rare
Dylan Barber, Music Producer - Self-employed
About the panellists:
Dr Oliver Morris, Director of Education & Skills UK Music
Oliver has been with UK Music since 2015. Before this he was a tutor, researcher, community worker, musician and composer. His PhD thesis explored ‘The Educational and Economic Aspirations of Young People in Wales’. He sits on the MU’s Education Committee, advisory board for Live Music Exchange, steering group for Make Music Day UK, advisory group for London Music Fund’s Amplify London Programme and is a member of Anthem that was set up to deliver the Welsh Government’s new Music Endowment Fund for Wales.
Bre McDermott-King – International Product Manager – AWAL
Bre is an International Product Manager at AWAL, a label under Sony Music UK, who works with marketing teams across the globe to execute campaigns for independent artists. She previously headed up Sony Music UK’s first ever diversity committee, HUE UK - a title that won her a no.14 position on the Yahoo! Finance x The EMpower 100 Ethnic Minority Future Leaders 2021 list. Bre co-founded and runs a collective called Women Connect, which specializes in promoting equal opportunities for women, non-binary and gender-fluid people in the creative industries. She is also a Board Member and Trustee of Youth Music.
Chloe Kwok – Musician & Composer – Rare
Chloe is a Musician at Rare Ltd – an in-house composer writing music for Sea of Thieves. She first joined Rare as an Audio Intern after graduating from the University of Huddersfield in 2019, with a bachelor’s degree in Music and Sound for Image. Since then, she has composed for many trailers and in-game assets for the Sea of Thieves and for upcoming games at Rare Ltd.
Dylan Barber – Music Producer – Self-employed
Dylan is an award winning sound engineer from Norwich. At the beginning of his career, he worked primarily in live sound. Until 2020, he worked in a range of venues with a variety of bands and in broadcast with the BBC: this kind of work helped him learn his craft and gain on-the-job experience. During the pandemic, he became interested in recording and used the downtime to learn new software and skills, and in 2022, he opened a recording studio. He’s also a lecturer in Music Technology and Acoustics in FE and HE at Access Creative College.
Additional resources
Warm up exercise
Use the introductory exercise (10-15 mins) to get your students thinking about music and the role it plays in our everyday lives. The exercise features prompts for both group and class discussions. A full lesson plan introducing job roles and pathways in the music industry will be available soon.
Download the introductory exercise.
Useful links
Discover job roles in music on UK Music's website