I’ve missed the boat here! I missed Central Bedfordshire Council’s announcement regarding the re-launch of the music service, Creative thinking to maintain creative services, which was released on 6th June.
On 2nd June, Jo and I attended another stakeholder meeting, held by Central Bedfordshire Council at their offices in Chicksands. The tone of the meeting was very honest and encouraging. It was accepted that the fee rise had proved very negative and hadn’t actually raised any additional revenue. However, a proper business plan was now in place and being reviewed weekly. It is planned that as the numbers of people using the service increases the cost savings can be passed onto the users.
Greater emphasis needed to be put on advertising what is available and increasing the number of people using the service. Different groups had started working together to enable activities to be delivered; an example of that was this summer’s courses that had originally been cancelled. I think everyone at the meeting accepted that what had happened was in the past and that we all needed to work together to make a successful music service for the future.
The future of Dunstable Music Centre is secure for the short term, but increased numbers and an individual business plan will be needed going forward.
I planned to write this post after the council released their statement and then missed the announcement. It is encouraging to be able to write a more positive post than the previous ones in the last few months, let’s hope I wasn’t right earlier.
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