Live Music Now and the University of South Wales have published a free guide to support music practitioners, educators and school staff working with autistic children and young people in Autism Resource Bases (ARBs) – dedicated classes within mainstream schools.
The guide is the culmination of three years of evaluated pilot work funded by Youth Music, and a year of formal participatory action research funded by the AHRC Hub for Public Engagement with Music Research at the University of Southampton. It brings together evidence from a scoping review of existing research, a national survey of over 100 ARB settings across all four UK nations, collaboration with autistic musicians and professional stakeholders, and action research delivered through musician-in-residence projects in Wales and Northern Ireland.
The number of ARBs in mainstream schools has grown rapidly across the UK in recent years. Research indicates that music builds confidence and wellbeing and can be both a tool for communication and a means of building communication skills, particularly for autistic young people. Yet the project found that music provision in many settings remains limited – and that fewer than a third of settings surveyed had any contact with their local music education hub or music service.
The guide addresses this directly. Neurodiversity-affirming, grounded in the social model of disability and guided by a strength-based understanding of autism, it provides a practical, evidence- and values-based framework for anyone working with autistic young people in these settings – whatever their musical background or budget. It doesn’t prescribe specific musical activities, but instead offers a structure, guiding principles and values, and practical prompts and ideas.
It was developed collaboratively by Dr Beth Pickard, Senior Lecturer in Music Therapy at the University of South Wales; Alex Lupo, autistic musician, community musician and music therapist who is Creative Lead and Trainer at Live Music Now and led the musician-in-residence projects; and a steering group of autistic musicians with diverse lived experience.
