Editorial: Summer Term 1 2022-23

When I came to Drama & Theatre from BBC Music Magazine, I had developed an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the niche field of classical music but admittedly felt slightly out of the loop with the rest of the arts industry. I therefore felt incredibly fortunate to arrive here and be thrown headlong into the judging for the 2023 Music & Drama Education Awards, where I could learn about it at lightning speed! Chairing the judging panel with Music Teacher's wonderful former editor Harriet Richards gave me the opportunity to read the dozens of applications that came in, all providing brilliant insights into the world of music and drama education in the UK. With our panel of industry experts, we were able to whittle these nominees down, with the winners announced at a ceremony in London.

It was both impressive and reassuring to learn about the vital work being done around the UK, both locally and nationally, to support students and make music and drama education as inclusive, progressive and dynamic as possible. Despite facing an immensely challenging year, this remarkable sector has thrived against extraordinary odds, continuing to offer projects, products, performances and services of an extremely high quality.

Among this year's winners are inclusive choirs, a wordless mask theatre company and a new organisation offering music lessons for Ukrainian refugees – each catering to those people and groups who may have previously been overlooked in mainstream education. I strongly recommend everyone visit musicdramaedawards.com to read more about this year's brilliant winners.

It feels like a particularly pivotal time to be working in education and we wanted to confront the key issues of today head on in this issue. Rhianna Elsden explains her nuanced, complicated relationship with industrial action – and why she decided to strike for the first time as part of the recent strikes across the public sector. In our Views section, actor Eleanor Pead shares her frustrations with the lack of financial education in our Drama curriculum, while Aimee McGoldrick asks why we don't have a governing body overseeing the safe running of out-of-school Drama clubs. To tie in with the release of her book Teaching Performance Practices in Remote and Hybrid Spaces, Jeanmarie Higgins outlines some of the ways we need to bring the digital mode back into our in-person teaching to help enhance our Drama classrooms.

Also this issue, I run through my experience attending my very first Music & Drama Education Expo, while our editorial assistant Hattie Fisk meets a set designer at the top of his game, shining a much-needed spotlight on a profession too often overlooked in conversations around live performance.

- Freya Parr, editor