At a Graduation Ceremony held in Winchester Cathedral on Friday 24th October, cornet player Katie Topp, (now Mrs Adam Smith), graduated as a Master of Arts in Cultural Arts Management.

Katie’s studies had centred largely around the inequalities in Arts Council funding for traditional British art forms, taking the brass band movement as an example. During her course Katie had presented a paper on the subject to the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise’s Annual Symposium at Somerset House.

In her paper, Katie highlighted the failure of applications for band funding as applicants failed to meet strict Arts Council criteria regarding cultural diversity, forcing brass bands to rely increasingly on sponsorship to survive. Musical standards are, she argued, being dumbed-down as bands are forced to perform ‘bums on seats’, middle of the road, audience-friendly programmes and move away from innovative new compositions, with Arts Council policy therefore failing to recognise the high quality musicianship and composition the brass band movement produces and nurtures across all age groups, classes and professions. The paper was enthusiastically received by the audience on the day and has since been published.