The Choir is supporting Preludes Music as our charity this year. This is the education arm of Bristol Ensemble, the orchestra who will be performing with us in April 2025 in Bach's St John Passion. Preludes Music works in areas of Bristol that experience economic disadvantage and aims to put music at the heart of every child's education. Activities include in-person classroom sessions, instrumental lessons, orchestras, choirs and holiday clubs. See more about Preludes Music at https://bristolensemble. |
The Choir is supporting Borderlands “from exclusion to Belonging” Borderlands is a Bristol-based charity dedicated to combating exclusion and promoting belonging for asylum seekers and refugees in our community. They run a diverse range of projects aimed at providing support, guidance, and opportunities for those who have sought safety in the UK. Projects include: Welcome Centre: They offer a nutritious hot meal served once a week, a social supermarket offering fresh food to take away, a safe space for advice and support and a variety of member-led activities including art sessions, dance and health wellbeing sessions. Learning Project: They offer weekly English classes to empower members with language skills. Mentoring: They facilitate six-month partnerships with trained mentors, working together with members to achieve specific goals for their future. Their impact reaches far and wide, transforming lives and building a stronger community. Since the beginning of this year (Jan 2023), they have registered an astounding 222 new members across Borderlands. That's 343 people who have already walked through the doors of their Welcome Centre in East Bristol, seeking help and finding hope. |
Bristol Phoenix Choir chooses a charity to support each year. Representatives of the charity speak about their work at the Christmas Concert and retiring collections are taken at each of our events throughout the year. Last year, we decided to support NOYO. The National Open Youth Orchestra is a world first, an ambitious orchestra launched in September 2018 to give some of the UK’s most talented young disabled musicians a progression route. It promotes musical excellence, empowering 11-25 year-old disabled and non-disabled musicians to rehearse and perform together as members of a pioneering inclusive ensemble. Some of the National Open Youth Orchestra musicians play acoustic instruments; others, electronic instruments like the Clarion, which can be played with the movement of any part of the body including the eyes. NOYO collaborates with cutting-edge composers to create exciting new music for a diverse range of musicians and instruments. Their first commission, ‘The Umbrella’ by Liam Taylor-West won a British Composer Award in 2018. http://noyo.org.uk Although we held no concerts in 2020, choir members themselves donated £720 to NOYO, and this year decided unaimously to continue to support this wonnderful enterprise. We hope we may have the opportuntity to share some music making with them. |