We Don't Need No Education

We Don't Need No Education is Kev Nixon's uncompromising account of how modern music education lost its way - and how it could still be saved. Told in two parts, the book charts a transatlantic rethink of what learning music should actually look like. Part One begins in the UK, with Nixon's experiences at the top of the British music industry, and his co-founding of BIMM - the Brighton Institute of Modern Music in 2001 which they opened in four cities over ten years, making BIMM the biggest music college in Europe. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience, We Don't Need No Education expertly exposes how universities sidelined modern music, misunderstood popular culture, and treated contemporary musicians as an academic inconvenience. Nixon argues that education became obsessed with theory, hierarchy and qualifications, while ignoring how quickly the music world was evolving to the great benefit of millions of young people. The book challenges the idea that music education belongs in orchestra halls, questions who music careers are really for, and makes the case for education rooted in experience, history and human connection. Blunt, personal and informed, this is a book for anyone who believes education should prepare people for an actual career, not an imaginary one, and that music education needs to get in the real world before we lose it forever.