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The request to the Radcliffe Trust was titled;- Giving the Joy of Music to children with ASD

The Radcliffe Trust has supported The Gallions Music Trust with funding music opportunities for children with Special Educational Needs.  Their SEND pupils have far higher needs than average, with 7.4% of pupils with an Educational Health Care Plan compared to 3% nationally.

Fourteen children with ASD received 1:1 tuition to enable them to make progress on their instruments. This meant 3.5 hours of additional staffing a week, which over the 36 week year has accounted for The Radcliffe Trust grant.

Some children are non-verbal but enjoy attending music lessons alongside their peers.  The feedback from a young person following an external visit with a cello performance was a big shy smile and a thumbs up.

Paul Broadhurst (Chair of Trustees at The Gallions Music Trust) states “The Gallions Music Programme is one of the leading primary school music programmes in the country and we firmly believe that celebrating our diversity as a school through a programme that includes everyone is at the heart of what we do. The Radcliffe Trust grant has enabled us to develop our provision to achieve this goal.”

The University of York’s MA in Stained Glass Conservation is an internationally recognised graduate programme.

The Radcliffe Trust has been pleased to support Stained Glass Conservation MA bursaries at The University of York for many years.   At a time of significant additional pressure on students financial resources, the Radcliffe bursaries have ensured that our students have been able to commit themselves wholeheartedly to the additional pressures of the professional placement, a commitment that makes any other part-time working impossible to sustain

Gemma Lees, A beneficiary from last year, refining freshly applied hand putty with a scalpel for a c.1300 window from the choir clerestory of Cologne Cathedral (NV 10c). Photo: Jenny Rumbach.

Aabby Barofka presenting the Jim Budd Stained Glass project to young visitors at the Churches Conservation Trust’s site at St Mary, Shrewsbury. Photo: Jim Budd

The Radcliffe Trusts grant to Three Choirs has consolidated Three Choirs reputation for furthering their repertory of music. The festival continues to support aspiring young musicians, pre-professional players and composers writing the music of the 21st century; as it was in the 20th century commissioning Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Howells and Finzi to name a few.

A festival highlight was the Three Choirs Festival commission for a new work by composer Luke Styles for youth chorus and orchestra, and the grant from Radcliffe Trust made an essential contribution towards the funds necessary to pay for this world premiere performance in Hereford Cathedral.

Conservation and Restoration Project of a Heritage Wooden Tall Ship ‘Tectona’

This project, funded by The Radcliffe Trust has brought together the knowledge, skills and experience of skilled shipwrights, boat builders and sailors with the enthusiasm of regular weekly volunteers. The volunteers have included people from a wide range of backgrounds, including those in recovery from Addiction and Mental Health Issues, ex-service personnel, students, ex-offenders and retired people.   Together they have developed their skills and worked with their hands to conserve and rebuild the Tall Ship Tectona in order to get her sailing and providing life changing voyages to those in Recovery.

Piers (a local young man who had completed a boatbuilding apprenticeship with the RNLI) joined the Tectona refurbishment team with a great attitude and lots of skill but a gap in wooden boat building. Since joining Tectona’s refurbishment, he has gained invaluable experience from working on a real-life project alongside other shipwrights and volunteers. He has honed his woodworking skills whilst replacing the bulwarks and rebuilding the aft hatch. In September he is going on to complete a course at Falmouth Boat Building School and Tectona has inspired him to pursue a career in the heritage boat building industry.

The Radcliffe Trust has supported the Royal Opera House in memory of Ivor Guest, a former Trustee of the Trust since 2018, with the Associate Pianist role.

This stands unique within the sector, offering a young pianist a programme of structured training to approach a career as a ballet repetiteur. With the support from The Radcliffe Trust, the Royal Opera House were delighted to welcome pianist Zhu Sun to the role in September 2022.

This structured pathway has developed Zhu’s experience and confidence through an increasing level of responsibility and playing across several disciplines. She has developed a vast array of new, specialised skills required in this role, from developing a sharp understanding of the choreography and choreographic terms, to improvising in varying styles for dance, to providing music emulating that of the orchestra, to collaborating with conductors and communicating musical terminology through dance terminologies. This has been supported through one-to-one external teaching from leading class coaches, Nicki Williamson and Jonathan Still, and repertoire coaching with Kate Shipway, one of the most experienced Royal Ballet pianists, throughout Zhu’s tenure.

At a time when most UK conservatories offer no formal teaching for pianists to train as a ballet repetiteur, and the sector faces a real shortage of experienced ballet pianists in the UK, the Associate Pianist position tackles the need for formal, structured pathways that give talented and enthusiastic pianists the training, experience and confidence to be able to play for any ballet company in the world. Having excelled in her role as Associate Pianist this year, Zhu has proven she can.

Zhu Sun reflects on her time at the Royal Opera House and her experience as an Associate Pianist:

‘I realise that it does not only take good pianistic skills to fulfil the tasks that a ballet pianist faces on a daily basis – I need to know the choreography and provide music in a manner that an orchestra would, with timing and phrasing that I was not used to as a solo pianist, collaborating with conductors, communicating musical things with dancers and coaches in dance terminologies that they are familiar with.  The ballet class is an important yet very niche part of the job that requires very specific musicianship.’

The Radcliffe Trust funded a performance and workshop, for the Belfast Festival T/A Belfast International Arts Festival, led by the celebrated Irish traditional artist Martin Hayes, this included the provision of free tickets for community participants to the performance in the Grand Opera House in February 2023.

The performance featured Hayes headlining The Common Ground Ensemble, a group with its roots in traditional Irish music.

The community workshop, engaged 20 young participants, taking part in a partnership with Belfast TradFest who benefitted from many community links and cross-promotional opportunities.

More than 900 people attended the Martin Hayes performance in Belfast’s iconic Grand Opera House.

20 beneficiaries attended the Masterclass, with 75% being under 25 yrs of age.
60% were from the from Greater Belfast area of whom:
50% from areas which feature in Top 20 Most Deprived SOA (Super Output Areas) (NISRA, 2017)

One beneficiary stated:- “Getting a ticket to this Martin Hayes workshop was like winning the lottery. To spend 90 minutes listening to a legend describing his craft and providing demonstrations on the fiddle was a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

With the funding from the Radcliffe Trust, North Lands Creative ran a 3-year Glass Skills Programme of 21 individually designed skills classes in their extensive glass-studio facility alongside the support of an excellent, highly qualified and experienced team of visiting artists to foster individual creative growth and expertise.

360 participants benefitted from the classes and it is anticipated that the on-line tutorials produced as part of each class will reach a wider online audience (est. 7,350 views).

North Lands Creative learnt that currently there is extraordinary talent coming out of UK courses in glass and the demand for these skills programmes is greater than expected.

There has been a revival of interest in flameworking and lampworking classes which will be included in future programming. North Lands Creative is delighted to play a part in safeguarding this technique and have brought a contemporary focus to a discipline that had seen a decline in practice sustainability.

Photo credits: Tim Savage

The grant awarded to Britannia Sailing Trust by The Radcliffe Trust was spent on putting together a traditional toolkit of hand tools necessary in the craft of wooden boatbuilding. This toolkit always stays with Britannia and is for the sole use of the volunteers, trainees and crew who do not have traditional tools of their own.

Over the last year The Britannia Sailing Trust have been supporting five young people who are learning traditional skills, how to look after tools, sharpen and keep them clean and in good order. As well as the young people, volunteers of all ages have benefitted from using the tools.

Hull planking and the deck have been caulked by volunteers using caulking mallets and sets of caulking irons, allowing several people to be doing the job at the same time, thus speeding up the task. This is just one example of a traditional skill that is being passed on to young and old alike, ensuring that the skills are not lost but preserved.

Support from the Radcliffe Trust allowed Independent Arts Projects (IAP) to realise their plans to tour the UK with live performances of Sound Symphony by Ellie Griffiths in co-production with Oily Cart in spring 2022 and deliver Sound Symphony “At Home” experience in February 2023.

The Project involved an eight week physical and one week virtual UK tour of IAP’s critically acclaimed music production Sound Symphony, a sound based, immersive sensory production specially developed with and for children with profound autism and additional support needs.

Without this funding, Independent Arts would not have been able to go ahead with the project as they have found it increasingly difficult and expensive to present high quality work for their audiences.   The Radcliffe Trust were able to support them at a critical time for ‘return to live work’ post pandemic for their autistic audiences.

The Radcliffe Trust’s grant enabled the Lettering Arts Trust (LAT) to connect with nine primary schools to offer Wild Little Letters days. Some 150 children were able to join in the cross-curricula sessions.

These daylong workshops comprised a visit to Lettering Arts Trust’s gallery to view the ‘On A Knife Edge’ exhibition about endangered British habitats, animals, flora and fauna followed by a nature walk on the Snape nature reserve to look at and appreciate the environment, and identify lettering shapes in the landscape, trees, grasses and plants. In the afternoon the children drew upon their morning’s experience in their classroom where a professional lettering artist showed them how to draw, paint and craft (collage) letters inspired by forms from nature.

For the Lettering Arts Trust the initiative represented a really positive way to engage with the local East Suffolk community, and brought their work to the attention of teachers, children and, by association, parents as well.

At a reception at the gallery, councillors from East Suffolk Council heard about the Wild Little Letters initiative and consequently some council funding has been offered to allow more schools to be offered the day workshops.

The Lettering Arts Trust has now developed an excellent relationship with the Suffolk Wildlife Trust who are keen to work together to expand the programme for family visitors to their centres.

Wild Little Letters was also nominated for an award from the Association of Suffolk Museums for work with young people.