What's Next?

Dear supporters and donors

Huge thanks from all of us here at Chiltern Arts and on the Saint Nicolas Team for your generous contributions to the crowdfunding campaign.

As you may be aware, we have unfortunately not reached our ideal target in the original timeframes. However, I am delighted to let you know that with the donations from the crowdfunding campaign and the Arts Council grant, we have raised enough to move this project to a phased approach with an initial short film being made and released in time for Christmas. We will be in touch in the next few days with donors regarding donation rewards, and below is a brief description of our next steps:

- Later this month all the artists for the project – Nicky Spence, Ken Burton, I Fagiolini, the City of London Sinfonia, Alex Barnes and Bill Barclay – will meet in London to record a small selection of movements from Britten's Saint Nicolas, therefore still providing essential work for freelancers at this difficult time. This will be recorded 'as live', as originally intended. 

- We are very pleased to announce the addition of Iain Farrington and Stephen Farr to our team as pianist and organist respectively – with one further pianist to be announced soon.

- The movements being recorded will include movements 1 and 9, which feature virtual choir, therefore giving our amateur musicians the opportunity to be involved with the project in this first phase.

- We will also be recording movement 2 which will include virtual children's choir.

- The resulting short film will be released in time for Christmas this year.

- We will be converting our crowdfunding campaign into an open-ended project in order to continue raising money towards the final product, which we will aim to complete in 2021. 

- We will keep all donors and supporters updated at all stages of the project.

Thank you again for your generous support. We are delighted to be taking the first steps to making this project a reality and bringing Saint Nicolas to life.

Very best wishes,

Naomi Taylor

Chiltern Arts Creative Director