Project Update

Dear Supporters,

I can't quite believe that six months has passed since your generosity enabled us to release our short film as a pre-Christmas reminder of the joy and power of live music – but here we are, somehow at the beginning of July...

So, with many apologies for our silence, I am writing now to let you know that this project has in fact been paused for a number of reasons. The first is funding: the funds that we raised for the initial phase of the project covered all of the costs of the project, with a small amount (approx £300) remaining, which enabled us to put something towards our administrative costs which had otherwise been unpaid. The events at the beginning of the year, with the third national lockdown being announced in early January, caused a lot of extra work for the team, who would otherwise have been focussing on raising additional funds for the second phase of the project – the time remaining was not sufficient to secure the funds that were needed, and we were not in a position to commit to taking the project further without having a significant portion of the funding in place. 

The second main reason is that following a discussion with the creative minds on the project, it was felt that the first phase of the project actually achieved rather beautifully what we set out to do: we provided paid work for over 20 freelance musicians in an otherwise very dry year, we gave over 100 amateur singers and children the opportunity to participate in a virtual choir project that saw them performing alongside professional musicians, and we created a product that offered thought-provoking comment on the plight of arts and culture over the pandemic. We celebrated live and virtual music-making, by safely gathering professional musicians together to perform and record side-by-side in a shared space, and by using that recording to add a virtual element with our virtual choir to create a unique and powerful short film. 

Your support of the initial phase of this project made this happen, and we are so enormously grateful that we were able to go ahead last Autumn with the recording. 

So while we pause on this project for the reasons above, I wanted to write to you all to thank you once more, and to encourage you also to continue to support live music where you can – and to attend events that are beginning to happen now, as and when you feel comfortable doing so. If you haven't yet had your first taste of live music since lockdown, do savour that moment of remembering how it feels to share the space with others, to feel the vibrations and to remind yourself of the luxury of that very real experience of simply being in the room.

Very best wishes,

Naomi