Education continues to be the buzzword on everyone's lips. With the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) launching its Music Manifesto in July we are seeing a much greater link up between government and industry in the desire to ensure that music becomes a vital part of the curriculum.

The music industry is aware that as well as offering legitimate solutions for accessing music digitally it must also work at a grass roots level to increase copyright awareness. British Music Rights, representing the interests of composers, songwriters and music publishers, has signed up to the Government's Music Manifesto by pledging to help deliver an awareness of copyright and a value for creativity. Given the importance of the creative industries to the UK economy, society and culture we believe that it is essential to nurture both potential creators and innovators, as well as inform consumers and audiences of the links between creativity and copyright. We believe that building awareness of copyright and creativity should happen at the very earliest stage in the education system, in primary schools, and that throughout school this should be at the core of appropriate curriculum subjects, e.g. the arts, design and technology, citizenship and enterprise, rather than just as an optional extra.

Working towards this we are hosting a seminar on July 15th at the Imagination Gallery which will bring together music creators, teachers, opinion formers and other key stakeholders to develop educational proposals that are imaginative, understandable and relevant. This seminar is being organised in partnership with both DfES and DCMS and will include an opening speech from Estelle Morris (Minister for the Arts). The seminar will include two interactive sessions which aim to examine why copyright is important and what practical solutions we can develop to deliver it.

As part of this drive to raise awareness we have now joined the European Music Copyright Alliance (EMCA) which is a collection of organisations across Europe with an interest in copyright. EMCA is an educational initiative, targeting students from primary to middle schools across Europe. It aims to help young people to understand what intellectual property is, why it is important and how it can help to promote future artistic creativity across Europe and all over the world.

We are currently developing some lesson plans, with the help of a network of teachers who are associated with the Music Sound Foundation. These will be piloted in a selection of schools across the UK before the summer break. A press launch is scheduled to take place in Brussels in late September and the EMCA website will be launched at that time (http://www.emcaweb.net/). The full awareness initiative will be rolled out in schools across Europe in October. This might also include visits from working composers and songwriters to halp bring the lessons to life. In addition to this we will be ensuring that all the relevant opinion formers are kept abreast of all activity.

We view this very much as a starting point in the move to develop teachers' resource materials and we would welcome feedback from all schools who want to take part. For further information about the EMCA initiative please visit the EMCA website or contact British Music Rights directly on 020 7306 4446.