Jennie Henley

An internationally-renowned expert in music pedagogy and educational strategist, Professor Jennie Henley has as taught and led music in various contexts for over 25 years. Her experience spans instrumental teaching, ensemble direction, class teaching, workshop leading and teacher education. She has worked with children, young people and adults and has a rich tapestry of practice crossing music education and community music, often working in challenging and complex settings. As an educational leader, she has designed innovative music education programmes, including distance learning and continuing professional development, and developed and led educational strategy.

A member of the Executive Team at the RNCM with responsibility for the Education Strategy, Access and Participation and the Academic Portfolio, her external work includes Quality Assessor for the Office for Students, Chair of the Greater Manchester Civic Universities Board and board member of the Greater Manchester Higher board.

Jennie is a Professor in Music Education with a research specialism in the relationship between pedagogy and inclusion. Her research has public impact and she has attracted funding from a variety of funders including AHRC, ACE, Comenius and she is regularly engaged as a consultant for international and national education design and evaluation work. She has held key research leadership roles and has an extensive publications profile. Her unique combination of strategic thinking and vision development, with the creative and lateral thinking that being a musician brings, is grounded in a deep experience in teaching and underpinned by her research.

• Inclusive pedagogy
• Music Education
• Community Music

Jennie’s research interests surround the relationship between pedagogy and inclusion. Jennie is currently undertaking two research projects. The first, Artists Care, explores the ways that charitable organisations fund, structure and manage care and supervision for artists working in challenging and complex settings. Phase 1 involved a Rapid Evidence Assessment of professions outside of music in order to understand the ways care and supervision are structured within health and social care professions. Funded by Arts Council England and The Lightbulb Trust, phase 2 is currently underway. This involves detailed ethnographies of three charitable organisations that provide music programmes and projects within criminal justice, detention and challenging community settings. The ethnographies include an evaluation of the organisation structures and strategies for supporting artists and how they support artists in sustaining careers in challenging contexts. The third phase will involve the application of the findings of the Rapid Evidence Assessment to the Ethnographies in order to design a large Scale Action Research project that will involve the design of three Artists Care programmes to suit each charitable organisation.

Jennie’s second research project explores partnership working as a way to address barriers to music education for young people in hard to reach areas. As part of the five-year RNCM Engage West Cumbria project, funded by the Benny Walker Charitable Trust, the research programme will seek to understand the ways in which a conservatoire (the RNCM) and a music hub (Cumbria Music Hub) are working in partnership to address barriers identified in previous research (Henley and Barton, 2022). The project has three workstreams: raising attainment, progression, and workforce development. The five-year research programme has two strands: process and impact evaluation to understand how far the musical activities achieved their objectives and how activity design has addressed the identified barriers to music education, and a longitudinal ethnographical research study to understand the complexities of partnership working in developing a musical community that meets local need.