Ed Sheeran has launched a new foundation to support music education in the UK, stressing how important it was to his early career.
The Ed Sheeran Foundation will aim to provide inclusive, high-quality music education for children around the country, with a particular focus on areas where it is currently less accessible.
The initiative will seek to address educational inequality in the UK, noting that a 2019 BPI survey found that one in four schools that serve disadvantaged communities currently offer no music lessons at all.
Sheeran is marking the launch of the foundation by visiting schools in Cardiff, Coventry, Edinburgh and Belfast.
“Music education has shaped who I am,” he has said. “I’ve always enjoyed playing music, and it’s led to some of the best moments of my life.”
The foundation will work alongside the likes of grassroots organisations such as Coventry Alternative Provision Academy and Sound Progression in Cardiff. The founder of the latter, Paul Lyons, has said: “Our young people come from diverse backgrounds across Cardiff and enjoy creating music in various genres from Afrobeats to Indie.”
“Our weekend workshops serve as safe, inclusive spaces that unite communities – but without additional investment, we risk losing this and the incredible talent they nurture.”
The Ed Sheeran Foundation will also advocate for greater recognition of the transformative power that music can have on young people’s lives and the importance of employing music teachers in schools.
Sheeran has been outspoken about the future of the music industry in the past, backing the Music Venue Trust’s ‘Own Our Venues’ campaign in 2022 and highlighting the need to protect grassroots venues around the country.
“Small, independent venues are so, so important to the music community, and I’ve played some of my favourite gigs of my career in these rooms,” he said at the time. “We’ve got to do all we can to protect these beautiful venues that we’ve all come to love for years to come.”
Last year, he also criticised the Conservative government for supporting bankers over bands. “I’ve been doing probably for the last seven years stuff with music in high schools because in my area, so basically in 2017/ 2018, my old music teacher came to me and he was like, ‘look, the government that is currently in charge, do not value art at all.. arts, drama, music.’ And they cut all the funding for comprehensive high schools,” he explained.
“So my music teacher came to me and was going, I think they had to share between art, music and drama, like £700 per year for all three subjects. So I started funding that at my local high school. And then you see a massive uptick in kids doing production, kids doing songwriting, kids doing this.”
Sheeran’s interest in the local economy also stretched to his beloved Ipswich Town Football Club last year, when he purchased a minority 1.4 per cent stake in the club and agreed to continue to be the front of shirt sponsor for the team.
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