"Why is it that in our culture doing ­something extremely complex – like playing a ­musical instrument – only quite well isn't really valued? Surely there's something wrong in that."
Last year, a government report identified 49,140 amateur arts groups in England, of which 11,220 were formally constituted music groups.

Read this article by Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/18/amateur-classical-music-in-u...

Amateur music-making gets very little attention. Critics rarely review concerts by non-professionals, except in the case of those crack amateur ­choruses that perform with major orchestras, such as the CBSO Chorus. And yet the UK could be mapped out in a dense patchwork of amateur ­creativity. Last year, a government report identified 49,140 amateur arts groups in England, embracing skills from quilting to creative writing and film-making. Of these, 11,220 were music groups (the tip of the iceberg, since many "groups" are so informally constituted they would never show up in an official survey).