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TradMentor

If you’re involved in teaching trad music on a regular basis, where can you go for support in reflecting on and developing your work? Maybe you‘d like to make some changes? Struggling to juggle several jobs? Need a confidence boost? Would you like to discuss things in confidence with a mentor? This year, the TMF launched a new project called TradMentor, which provides a framework for mentoring partnerships to do just this.

We’ve been piloting mentoring for a few years now – there’s widespread evidence that mentoring works and we’re pleased to have funding from YMI to put in place a coordinator and train a team of mentors. The TMF is a member of the Scottish Mentoring Network, which offers training, quality awards, thematic networks and other resources, and has been invaluable in helping to get TradMentor started.

The project coordinator is Dr Jo Miller, ‘Highly Commended Mentor’ at the SMN awards in2014, and our first six mentors are Marie Fielding, Gica Loening, Grant McFarlane, Anne Martin, Gillian Stevenson and Daniel Thorpe. They will be working with 10 trad musicians from across Scotland over the next few months. Look out for updates on the progress of the project, and how to get involved in the next cycle.

In November, participants came together for the launch of TradMentor, and here they are in the photo above!