Exploring how composing
is taught and learned
at KS3, KS4 and KS5

Listen Imagine Compose investigates how composing is taught and learned in secondary schools and draws on the expertise of teachers and their pupils, composers, music education academics and arts organisations.

Listen Imagine Compose is a partnership project between Sound and Music, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Birmingham City University.

Since 2010

We have been undertaking action research, holding symposia, developing resources and running CPD since 2010. This website hosts all of our work to date and has been funded by Youth Music.

“Listen Imagine Compose has played a significant part in improving the musical and educational understanding of professional musicians, teachers and academics.”

Mark Philips, HMI Music, 2012

Listen Imagine Compose - Why it Matters

Listen Imagine Compose

Listen Imagine Compose began as a series of action research projects and symposia culminating in a major report by lead academic Professor Martin Fautley

Phase One

Phase 1 comprised a series of symposia and six action research questions that look at six key projects.

Phase Two

A Continuing Professional Development course for secondary music teachers was piloted in Birmingham and London during the 2014/15 academic year.

Phase Three

The CPD is now available as an accredited course at Masters Level (Level 7). The first cohort began in the 2016/17 academic year, with teachers working towards a Masters in Teaching in Learning or a Masters in Educational Leadership.

Join us for the Listen Imagine Compose Away Day

For the last two years the wider Listen Imagine Compose network have got together in July for a day of presentations, provocations, ideas and discussions around the teaching and learning of composing in secondary schools. This year, we are getting together again on the 7th July for another day focused around creative composing at GCSE … Continued

Apply for the Listen Imagine Compose CPD!

We are looking for the next cohort of secondary school teachers to join the Listen Imagine Compose CPD course. The CPD is designed to offer secondary music teachers the opportunity to develop skills in teaching composing with KS3, GCSE and A level students.

CPD now with the option of accreditation!

We are delighted that Listen Imagine Compose is now full accredited.
Participants who join the course can chose whether to take a Diploma or MA in Teaching and Learning, or in Educational Leadership from Birmingham City University.

How can we help pupils Listen, Imagine and Compose?

Judith Robinson, Project leader for Listen Imagine Compose, blog on creative composing (originally posted in 2016)
I come from a generation of musicians who didn’t get much opportunity to compose…

Listen Imagine Compose 2016 Away Day

In July 2016, members of the Listen Imagine Compose community met in Cambridge for an away day to discuss learnings from the course and what to do next.