Shropshire music festival saved after 'heartwarming' response to emergency appeal
A music festival in Shropshire has been saved after a stunning response to its emergency fundraising appeal.
Organisers of the Whittington Music Festival say this year's event in May will go ahead despite a pre-Christmas decision by the Arts Council not to provide £15,000 grant funding.
In just three weeks they raised more than £11,000 of the £15,000 needed to finance the 2023 festival from May 17 to 21.
A festival trustee said they received an "incredible response" following an appeal to the local community as they feared that 2022's event could have been the last.
“The incredible response from our friends and the public is truly heartwarming," said the festival spokesperson.
"It shows that people have faith in our festival and that what we are doing, bringing world-class music to rural Shropshire, is worthwhile and appreciated.”
Whittington Music Festival was established in 2013 as an annual chamber music festival held in St John the Baptist Church in Whittington.
The church has a wonderful acoustic so is a perfect venue for concerts, and the warm welcome shown by the community has meant that the musicians are keen to return year after year.
In recent years artistic director Sophia Rahman has diversified the repertoire to include jazz and song to appeal to a wider audience. She even studies school exam syllabuses to tailor parts of the programme to be useful for GCSE and A Level Music students.
If a series of world-class concerts were not enough, the festival also has a superb outreach programme.
Artists work with young musicians from local secondary schools and with primary school children from the MusicMOB charity.
They organise exhibition of music-inspired artwork by local school children at Oswestry Library. And they take their music out into the community with a concert for the U3A as well as a free after-show gig at The White Lion in Whittington.
The programme for 2023 includes From Bach to Bollywood; A Night at the Movies, featuring classical and non-classical music used in movie soundtracks, and continuing the movie theme, there will be a collaborative project with Kinokulture in Oswestry.
Kinokulture will open its doors for the final time on May 18 to show two short silent films with live music by festival musicians as well as the 2013 film Le Week-End starring Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan with soundtrack by Jeremy Sams, Whittington Music Festival’s composer in residence.
The concerts on Saturday May 20 and Sunday May feature internationally-renowned baritone Roderick Williams and tickets for these are expected to be in high demand.
Tickets will be on sale in February from the festival website (whittingtonmusicfestival.org.uk) and from Rowanthorn in Oswestry. Anyone under the age of 26 is admitted free of charge to all the festival concerts.
A festival trustee said; “We are absolutely delighted with the response to our appeal.
"Donations and Friend subscriptions have poured in and with a little cost-cutting, we are confident that we will meet our budget for the 2023 festival in May.”
Oswestry School and Richard Burbidge are signed up as business sponsors, and any other local companies who would be interested in supporting the festival by becoming a sponsor can get in touch by emailing Rob Greaves, chair of the trustees, at info@whittingtonmusicfestival.org.uk.
The full programme for May 2023, along with information about how to donate or become a Friend of the festival can be found at https://whittingtonmusicfestival.org.uk
