About us

Who are we?

Voices Foundation is a national music charity working to help schools, academies, Music Education Hubs, and other partners from across the UK to establish effective music education since 1993. Everyone has a voice, and we believe singing is a powerful way for children to become proficient musicians, excel across the curriculum and develop self-esteem.

Working hard to transform music in schools, we partner with teachers to develop their knowledge, skills, and confidence in effectively teaching music. Our approach to teacher development supports schools in their mission to embed daily singing into school life through the curriculum and extra-curricular choral enrichment.

Our model transforms whole schools and engages teachers and children by focusing on sustainable and integrated music education for all! By utilising our straightforward and easy to use teacher handbooks, we help schools make singing a key and regular part of their educational experience for every pupil.

Voices Foundation Chair and CEO in conversation

Every year, our team of expert Musicianship and Choral Practitioners work with over 1,400 teachers and 45,000 children from across 200 nurseries, primary & secondary schools in the UK!

Our work

Music is central to the human experience; by participating in musical activity, children can take part in a multi-sensory experience that engages a wide variety of brain functions. We believe that music activity can benefit children’s learning, skills, and wellbeing in important and unique ways.
We strive to improve children’s musicianship and singing voices through a straightforward method and a diverse range of accessible choral repertoire. We do this by providing customised singing programmes for nurseries, primary & secondary schools, academies, and Music Education Hubs. In addition, we create a unique experience to improve musical learning whilst simultaneously supporting the development of teachers in musical education.

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Our Principles

We envision a world where high-quality music education is valued, prioritised and accessible. To reach our goal, we must be inclusive in how we engage our audiences and strive for diversity within our organisation, reflecting the diversity of the UK and the school population. To achieve the greatest impact, we focus on working with the people that have the most influence over children’s lives: senior school leaders, teachers, policymakers, and parents.

We equip teachers and schools to provide high-quality and sustainable music education for all pupils. Our model of teacher development provides iterative CPDL, developing non-specialist teachers’ knowledge, skills, and confidence in teaching music by working alongside Voices Foundation practitioners.

While we work with children from 0-18, our priority is to provide support at the primary school level, as early intervention has the most significant impact on pupils. We recognise there is a need to support the most disadvantaged children and we work closely with disadvantaged schools to develop and fund programmes

Our programmes respond to the specific needs of our audiences. In addition to our work in schools, we provide inspiring and accessible content for parents and guardians to support music learning at home. We also share our learning with sector colleagues with the vision and aim to develop conversations around music education with influencers and policymakers through high-quality evidence and insight.

We use singing as a tool to improve children’s music education because it’s practically universal: almost every child has a voice, and it’s accessible; there are no equipment costs, and you can sing anywhere!

Our History

Voices Foundation was founded in 1993 by Susan Digby OBE, following the award of a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship which enabled her to visit Finland, Hungary, Canada and the USA to study methods of music education and choral training.

The main inspiration for Voices Foundation was Susan Digby’s observation of the work of the renowned music educationalist Zoltan Kodāly in Hungary. Voices Foundation then engaged Michael Stocks as Director of Curriculum and Training with the primary responsibility of creating the methodology that we use to this day. In this role, Michael led the development of the methodology as well as devising and leading many of our training courses. He also trained many of our Music Consultants and oversaw the quality assurance of our work.

Since 1993 we have worked in hundreds of primary schools all over the country supporting teachers and providing direct benefits to thousands of children through our unique Musical Foundations programme which trains every teacher in the school to teach music with the same skills, confidence, and resource material that they have for all Foundation Subjects.