It always makes sense to start with a plan, and our plan for the new year places the 3 Pillars of the MIA front and centre of our thinking.
1. Bringing the Industry Together
Our MI Forum event at Birmingham in September 2022 was a great success, many attendees complimenting the balance of informative sessions with networking opportunities. It widened the concept for future MIA events, and we’re planning to put at least 5 physical events on over the next year, and to continue to look at locations around the country as one part of wider engagement.
Our Friday drop-ins, these have continued to be popular, and provide us with a platform to bring you opportunities to hear from experts in different fields as well as relaxed networking and discussion. These sessions will remain central to our interaction with you, but rather than always being ‘Friday Drop-ins’, we will be varying the day and time some weeks, so that everyone has the chance to get involved. Don’t forget to look out for the announcement emails and reminders so you don’t miss out on the sessions of most interest to you.
Last year, we launched our new website and it has been well received, but we’re not finished with it yet. Locking out the most useful content has brought additional value to MIA membership, and we’ll be continuing with that. We’re also tweaking the communities, reducing them in number and defining what sits within each of them so that you can have confidence in selecting the content that is most useful to you. We’re noticing a sharp uptick in our metrics and will keep working to bring you the most valuable news and features possible.
2. Amplifying the Voice
We’re already engaged at Government level with work on the £25m instrument fund announced as part of the new National Plan for Music Education, and we’ll be continuing our participation in the Task and Finish group on behalf of the industry in 2023, working with partners to ensure the money is spent sustainably on the right instruments. Opportunities for young people to learn music are essential both culturally and to the ongoing health and development of MI, so it’s important for us to be a part of this.
We will continue to lobby on sector relevant challenges such as business rates, trade-show support and high-street redevelopment, as well as sector-specific issues such as possible legislation around the use of lead in manufacturing.
3. Empower through Education
The State of the Industry survey published last year was a good first step in understanding exactly how UK MI was fairing post-pandemic. This year we will be building on that project, so we can deliver a similar snapshot of the position toward the end of the year, with some indication of the underlying trends as the sector develops.
Greening Music Tech was launched in 2022 – an initiative to help companies in the Music Technology sector reduce their CO2e emissions and run more environmentally sustainable businesses. The MIA sits on the Steering Group and is a founding member of this important coalition. We’ll also continue to keep you updated on environmental legislation that has potential affects on our industry, just as we did with issues including Pernambuco and the Ivory Act last year.
Time was understandably tight in Q4 of 2022 when we soft-launched our MIAcademy Sales Training, yet we’re still receiving requests for it. We’re booked in with our training partners to revisit this and we’ll be bringing you a new chance to benefit from invaluable CPD for your staff, helping them to create better customer experience whilst also putting more transactions through your tills.
The wider MIAcademy programme will continue, bringing members a broad curriculum of training and development sessions available as group sessions or on demand.
