Blog

  • Little Angel Theatre

    Thanks to funding from The Radcliffe Trust, the Puppetry Making Associate has been able to participate in a variety of projects across Little Angel Theatre. From creating crafting content for their YouTube channel to designing window displays for a local business, they have helped to spread the magic of puppetry throughout Islington and the world.

    With the announcement of Tier 3 and 4 in December, the Puppetry Making Associate went to work on a retelling of “The Christmas Nisse” over 25 videos, released daily between the 1st and 25th of December. This was a tremendous amount of work and the Puppetry Making Associate was incredibly important to the making process.

    Thankfully Little Angel Theatre were still able to run the Professional Development Courses via Zoom, and the Puppetry Making Associate attended the Puppetry Foundation Course. They learned core principles of puppeteering across several kinds of puppetry including marionettes, moving mouth puppets and more.

    Currently the Puppetry Making Associate is working on their own digital short, which will be released on the Little Angel Theatre’s YouTube channel. This project will bring together everything learned so far about making digital content and puppetry.

    Little Angel Theatre’s YouTube Channel: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/a6e3db4a/QGiswbkDFUautKE_NUdr6w?u=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmAEEtplnZ3YkZ3FWfbwJPQ

  • National Children’s Orchestras – NCO

    The National Children’s Orchestras (NCO) received a Covid 19 Music Hardship Grant from The Radcliffe Trust in July 2020.  NCO is an organisation that works with exceptional young people aged seven to 14 years old to experience the joy of orchestral playing.

    NCO’s award in July 2020 helped fund pivotal ‘replacement’ digital activity for 438 young musician members as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most importantly, the grant supported the NCO through serious financial pressure at a time when their young students needed them most.  The work culminated in a mass multi-track performance of a specially commissioned ‘NCO Mambo’, which included choreography, DIY percussion and improvisation.

    You can watch the final performance here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=02ZUX7J0_gA

  • The English Concert

    The Radcliffe Trust was very proud to support The English Concert with a grant to present Britain’s Orpheus, as part of the Trust’s Covid 19 Music Hardship programme. The grant enabled a series of six live-streamed concerts from stunning locations celebrating the music of Handel and Purcell.

    Learn more about Britain’s Orpheus here   https://englishconcert.co.uk/britains-orpheus/.

    The grant not only provided financial support for artists, but allowed connection with the The English Concert’s audience. Three of the performances were able to accommodate a very small number of live attendees, and the first concert reached over 33,000 people online.

     

  • Jessie’s Fund

    The Radcliffe Trust’s recent grant enabled Jessie’s Fund to continue to provide musical experiences for vulnerable children despite lockdown. The Fund created interactive music videos designed to be easy to follow, excellent quality musically, and tailor-made to help children, their families and teachers to make music together, whether at home or in school.

    Jessie’s Fund produced free-to-view videos, recorded by their musicians in their homes.  Each is around 20 minutes long and caters for the needs and processing times of sensory learners with complex needs.

    The Trust’s grant gave the Fund the opportunity to help children with special needs, and also allowed them to provide employment for freelance musicians at a time when all work was being cancelled. Feedback has been excellent:

    ‘I just wanted to email to say that I have just seen the new Jessie’s Fund video, I thought it was absolutely fantastic and spot-on for what schools need right now.’

    ‘I do your Calming Journey to Space with my class every Friday and they love it. The sense of calm by the end is just amazing.’

    The four videos can be found on the Fund’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/JessiesFund.

     

  • Academy of St Martin in the Fields

    The Radcliffe Trust supported the Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ digital campaign during lockdown, aimed at creating work for its musicians and expanding the amount of audio visual footage of the orchestra that is available online. The Academy successfully raised £100,000 from a number of sources, enabling them to fund streamed broadcasts of three full-length concerts from their recent archive, and three days of recording sessions. New film recordings of Elgar’s Serenade for Strings, Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony and Grainger’s Danny Boy will form the backbone of an online festival celebrating the Academy’s work in early 2021.

    In autumn 2020 they launched a new concert series at St Martin in the Fields, performing to a small socially-distanced audience and streaming performances, to reach a wider public. They will be using funds raised to make some of this content more widely available, and will soon be announcing exciting plans for a series of high-profile films with our Music Director Joshua Bell, to be recorded early in 2021.

     

  • The Radcliffe Trust supports the Help Musicians UK hardship fund

    The Trust has made a range of grants to organisations responding to the current pandemic in innovative ways.  As part of this programme the Trust has made a grant to Help Musicians UK for its hardship fund.

    For more information visit www.helpmusicians.org.uk.

     

  • The Crafts Council Hardship Fund

    In response to the huge challenges Heritage and Craft makers and businesses are facing at present, The Radcliffe Trust has made a grant to The Crafts Council for a hardship fund.  The fund launched on 17th June 2020.

    The Crafts Council has consulted with Icon, the Heritage Crafts Association and The Guild of Master Craftsmen, amongst others, to ensure the funds are widely distributed.  The Crafts Council gave directly to makers, in the form of £500 bursaries, who could not access other Government schemes.

    The Trust was also particularly keen to ensure that Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) makers were aware of the scheme and applied if appropriate.  The Crafts Council developed a promotional strategy including a number of partner and intermediary organisations, such as Shades of Noir, to ensure that applications from BAME makers were encouraged.

  • The Radcliffe Infirmary

    A commemorative plaque, paid for by The Radcliffe Trust, is now installed on the wall of the Old Radcliffe Infirmary.

    A ‘socially distanced’ unveiling took place in May 2020, and a more formal event is planned for when lock-down restrictions are eased.

    The plaque reads;

    “To honour the doctors and nurses and all who cared for the sick in the Radcliffe Infirmary 1770-2007”

     

  • Wigmore Hall Commissioning Series

    The Radcliffe Trust is proud to be partnering Wigmore Hall in an important series of chamber music commissions.  Initiated as part of our Tercentenary, the series fell naturally into two parts, the first comprising six new string quartets; and the second, a quartet, sextet, and octet commissioned from 2016 through to 2019.

    The composers are British, some well-established and some relatively early in their careers, and the performers chosen from amongst the leading chamber musicians of our time.  All nine new works will be premiered at Wigmore Hall.

    The commissions were conceived to reflect the Trust’s long-standing interests in both chamber music and composition, and to look to the future with the creation of an important addition to the chamber music canon.

    As well as adding significantly to the string quartet repertoire, it is hoped that the commissions will act as “companion pieces” to already-established chamber works for larger ensembles.  By so doing, the new works stand a good chance of finding regular performances in the future.

    The series started with a new composition by Mark-Anthony Turnage which was co-commissioned by Wigmore Hall, The Radcliffe Trust and NMC Recordings.

    The following performances were premiered at The Wigmore Hall and recorded by the NMC:

    • Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new work for the Belcea Quartet was performed in December 2014
    • Simon Holt’s composition for the JACK Quartet was performed in January 2015
    • In June 2015, the Carducci Quartet with the cellist Guy Johnson performed Anthony Gilbert’s string quintet “Haven of Mysteries”, in a programme which also included the great Schubert two cello quintet in C
    • In July 2016, a commissioned work for string quartet, by Donnacha Dennehy, was performed by the Doric String Quartet
    • Anna Meredith’s commission was premiered by Aurora Orchestra on 24th September 2016
    • Elias Quartet performed Paul Newland’s commission in May 2017
    • Alexander Goehr commission was premiered in September 2017 by the Nash Ensemble Quartet
    • In February 2019 Collin Matthew’s composition was performed by Britten Sinfonia.

    The NMC has already released the first volume of these recordings, titled “Bracing Change”, which includes the compositions of Simon Holt, Donnacha Dennehy & Anthony Gilbert.

    A further two albums are scheduled to be released in Spring 2020 and Winter 2021.

    The final event of the Commissioning Series will be on 10th July 2021 at Wigmore Hall, performed by Heath String Quartet.  It will be the European premiere of the Helen Grime quartet composition.

  • The statue of Dr John Radcliffe at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford

    The 25th September 2018 marked the unveiling of the statue of Dr John Radcliffe, situated at Green Templeton College, Oxford.

    The Radcliffe Trust has a long history with the city and University of Oxford having provided funding to build the Radcliffe Camera, the Radcliffe Observatory and the Radcliffe Infirmary. Given the Trust’s Tercentenary, it seemed appropriate for this connection to be commemorated with a statue in memory of Dr Radcliffe.  To that end, The Radcliffe Trust commissioned Martin Jennings to produce a suitable portrait of the doctor.

    Martin Jennings is a well-known and celebrated sculptor, having created works of many famous people including Mary Seacole, situated outside St Thomas’ Hospital; Charles Dickens in Portsmouth; and George Orwell outside Broadcasting House.

    The unveiling was a huge success with individuals from both The Radcliffe Trust and Green Templeton College there to celebrate this fitting new display. Felix Warnock, the Chairman of The Radcliffe Trust at the time, reflected on Dr Radcliffe’s legacy and how it remains relevant today. You can read his comments here.

    This statue was commissioned as part of the commemoration of the Tercentenary of The Radcliffe Trust, together with:

    For more information about the unveiling of the statue of Doctor John Radcliffe, please use the following links:

    The Oxford Mail :  John Radcliffe is honoured with bronze statue in Oxford

    The University of Oxford News: New statue of John Radcliffe unveiled