Playing our part

In the final investment year of our strategy, we continued to ensure we had the right people, systems and structures in place to take the organisation forward.

We were working in an incredibly challenging economic situation for the charity sector, but have continued to adapt to be able to share live music where it matters most.

We have taken intentional steps this year to ensure we are set up for the future and hold ourselves responsible for our wider impact on the environment and equality, diversity, inclusion and accessibility.

90% of staff and 60% of musicians that worked with us in 2025/26 responded to our EDIA survey

22% of musicians are aged 25-44, 36% are 45-65 and 42% are over 65

45% of our musicians are women, 53% are men and 2% are non-binary

In 2025/26 our environmental reporting estimates that our emissions are 20,725kg CO2e, which is equivalent to 2.5 average UK homes

Orchestrating positive change

We work with people from a wide range of backgrounds, cultures and communities, and we believe that strengthening equality and diversity across all areas of our work is essential to ensuring our programmes are relevant, inclusive and accessible to everyone who needs them.

Our equality, diversity, inclusion and accessibility (EDIA) action plan focuses on five key priorities: strengthening our use of data and evidence; increasing representation across our live music programmes and external communications; diversifying our workforce by attracting and recruiting people from under-represented groups; building awareness and understanding of EDIA among staff and volunteers; and fostering an inclusive organisational culture by removing barriers to participation.

In 2025/26, we:

Developed and launched a new charity website with enhanced digital inclusion and accessibility features

Introduced creative feedback tools to reduce barriers and enable more people to share their experiences

Created an Inclusive Language Guide to help staff and volunteers communicate with confidence in respectful and inclusive ways

Formalised our ongoing commitment to fair pay by registering as a Real Living Wage employer

In considering our responsibilities as an organisation, we recognise that our work has an environmental impact. We work across the UK with a network of professional musicians who travel to hospitals, hospices, care homes and community settings to deliver live music.

In 2025/26, we:

Participated in Culture for Climate training focused on climate justice

Established baseline environmental reporting to be submitted to Culture for Climate to identify areas for improvement

Drafted an updated environmental policy and developed an action plan for 2026/27 onwards

We review and update both our EDIA and environmental action plans annually and remain committed to reporting on our progress.

The acceleration of work in these areas would not have been possible without multi-year funding from Creative Scotland. We were delighted to be successful in our application to become a portfolio organisation for the first time from April 2025.

In addition to developing our live music delivery across Scotland, the grant has created an opportunity to further demonstrate our commitment to EDIA and environmental sustainability, and provides year-on-year support for our long-term strategic plans and vision.

Harmonising our teams across the UK

Over the past year we have taken steps to bring our fundraising, communications and live music teams together to improve collaboration and implement more efficient ways of working remotely.

We have developed two new Live Music Development Manager roles, focusing on programmes and operations respectively, to consolidate our work across the UK and make sure we have strong foundations for our future growth.

While our Live Music Coordinators will continue to support musicians and health and care partners in their local area, they are now able to arrange music anywhere in the UK. This means we can bring the benefits of learnings from across our teams to work in a more programme-led way that still prioritises local relationship building and knowledge of different areas.

Staff having their say

In January, we surveyed our team to find out how they feel about working for Music in Hospitals & Care. The results will be used to make improvements to current policies and our employee package for staff in the future.

We made a commitment to investing in our staff through the team restructure and training and development opportunities. We are pleased to see that these changes have translated into how staff feel about working for the charity.