Music schemes

This year the BBC Performing Arts Fund will be giving £450,000 to the development of new music and new musicians through two new schemes – Community Music and Music Fellowships.

We have already funded plenty of musicians and music projects in our time. We gave money to Adele when she was just fifteen to pay for her first home recording equipment, and look where she’s ended up! Okay, so we can’t guarantee that kind of success but you never know where talent, some help, and a bit of old fashioned hard work will take you.

Launching in May, the Community Music scheme will support grassroots music groups from across the UK. Grants awarded will allow groups to carry out training, attract new audiences, encourage new members and raise their profile in their community. Groups can apply for up to £5,000 for a distinct development project. Furthermore, grants of up to £10,000 will be awarded to groups wishing to commission new music.

The Music Fellowships scheme will open for applications in August and is designed to support individuals through the early stages of their music careers; helping them to establish themselves in the industry through bespoke placements within existing music organisations. Grants will be awarded to music companies, organisations, venues and agencies in order to host a BBC Performing Arts Fund Music fellow.

The Voice

As you may already know, the charity is funded through revenue from the voting lines of BBC One entertainment programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing and Over the Rainbow. This year, we are also delighted to announce that the new BBC One entertainment show The Voice will be raising money for the Fund through phone voting lines. The Voice will be looking for incredible new vocal talent from across the UK to support and nurture.

The Fund has been working with emerging talent for a number of years and hope that this funding from The Voice will allow us to continue to our work in through to 2013.

More details about both of these music schemes will be announced on our website over the coming months. You may have noticed that a lot of pages on our website are a little out of date at the moment though. We’ve been having a few technical issues but are working on getting more information on the site as soon as we can!

In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to be kept up to date about the launch of these music schemes.

"I think every single person on the team at The Accidental Festival is passionate about what we’re doing which is great. For me, it’s about providing that free platform for artists at all different kinds of stages in their career and allowing the exchange of varied experiences to happen. The festival particularly resonates with me as I see fellow artists reach the point in their career where they need that next step, and the festival can provide that.

Since its creation at The Central School of Speech and Drama in 2005, The Accidental Festival has welcomed over 200 international guests and artists. It was initially conceived as a project to give students practical experience in creative producing, teaching essential business skills that simply cannot be learnt from a textbook.

Each year a new student team take charge of their own team structure, budget, brand identity, artistic programming, presentation of the festival space, marketing, ethos and community, and education programme.

Madaleine Trigg in 'the moment I heard' by Daniel Somerville

The Accidental Festival has previously been hosted at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), the Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) and this year, the festival returns to the Roundhouse with the aim to be bigger, bolder, and to reach more people than ever before.

It’s a fantastic thing to be involved in, especially at 19! It’s a real world scenario and a project you have to sink your teeth into. You certainly can’t be passive about it.

So, based on my experience what’s the best advice I could give?

I think the following things are really important to think about when you’re involved in an event on any scale. I don’t think that this applies exclusively to work in festivals, but to everything you present. These questions are always good to come back to in times of a crisis, they give you focus!


When your event is complete, what would you like to be the thing that is most easily remembered about the event for those who attended?

The same question as above, but for yourself. What would you like to be the most memorable thing about the event?

Who would you like to attend and why?

Who are you making it for and why?

Thinking about other similar events, what do you think the aims of your event should be? A Unique Selling Point is vital - really get to know your audience’s wants and needs.

What would you most like to do within the project? Is there something special you would like to bring or contribute?

What, if anything, are you most worried about with the project and do you have any ideas about how to overcome those concerns? Identifying the potential risks and problems at the start prevents from any surprises later on!

What should the image of the event be? What should it look like, sound like, smell like?  Atmosphere is the most important thing! It’s the lasting impression your audiences are going to leave with.


In terms of my role in development, I guess the best piece of advice I’ve been given is fundraising isn’t just about getting money! We all know that there is very little money these days for funding the arts. However, getting things in kind and receiving good will gestures are what really have helped us to achieve the festival. Form relationships, get out there talking to people, and create positive relationships with companies that last.

Finally, be brave and bold! That way you’ll end up with an event that is fresh, exciting and far better than anything you could have imagined.”


To find out more the Accidental Festival visit their website or follow @accidentalnews

 

It’s hard to believe that we will mount our musical – The Wizard of Oz – in less than a week. The production will be the culmination of six months of work across Central Hounslow, involving over 200 people between the ages of 3 and 70+.

Local residents have been involved in a whole range of aspects of the production process. Local children will be performing in the play; teenage musicians will provide the accompaniment; we even have a set design team of families, children and older people from Age UK, who with their artwork will transform Lampton School into the world of Oz.

The support of the BBC Performing Arts Fund has allowed us to turn the play into a musical. This is a completely new experience for the children, and it’s proving to be the icing on the cake for us all!

Initially, some children were uneasy at being asked to sing or dance. The boys in particular were less to keen to try some choreography! It has however become a chance for both the artists and the children to learn from each other. It’s encouraged us to find new ways to bring dance and song into what we do. We now have a scene of giant puppet crows flying through the audience, as puppets became a way to get the children to dance without realizing it! We’ve also found that the children are happier to sing while skipping around the room than while standing around the piano. The chance to work with a Musical Director has given the children a whole host of new skills, from learning to breathe to increase their projection, to hitting new notes and creating new sounds with their voices.

Encouraging the children to act has presented its own challenges. You learn to balance your expectation of how to create a character with the realization that a child is learning to speak out loud through what you are doing, so you meet somewhere in the middle. You don’t always get what you think you will, and you have to change your mind a lot along the way but ultimately, I think it makes you better at what you do as an artist. I think it also shows the importance of investment in the arts and young people, because of the broad array of benefits it affords them. One father told me his daughter has dyslexia and dyspraxia so to hear her speaking out lines is both a surprise and a joy.

When I was a student I made theatre in all kinds of different ways. I acted, adapted, directed, lit, costumed, production managed and marketed shows from page to stage with varying degrees of success. The one thing I never really got a handle on was the role of the producer. Blessed with a succession of talented fundraisers and administrators, producing was never something to which I felt I needed to turn my hand.

Since graduating, however, it’s been an entirely different story. With the paucity of employment opportunities for performing artists in the industry today, often the best approach can be to make your own work: write, commission, fundraise for and stage it on your own terms. This was, after all, the business model adopted in recent years by theatre companies like Kneehigh, Punchdrunk and HighTide, all of which have achieved considerable success as a result of their efforts.

Last year, I decided to take this approach myself, joining forces with new companies and helping them to stage new work. The trouble was, this meant getting to grips with producing, and as disciplines go it’s certainly no easier, nor is it any less demanding, than acting, writing or directing. Producers have a lot of responsibility – often they will be the main go-between, liaising with venues, negotiating on performance rights, trying to ensure a good deal for the company.

With all this in mind, here are a few suggestions I have for anyone starting out as a producer:

1. Be organised.
This is number one for a reason. As a producer the onus is on you to schedule your company’s time constructively. It is never too early to start sounding out performance venues, possible backers, contributors and those who hold the rights to works you want to perform. If anything, approaching people months – sometimes years – in advance creates the impression of assured professionalism, and will serve you well when it comes to negotiating good terms for your company.

2. Be strategic.
Have a long term strategy in mind for your company. By the time one show goes up you need to be hard at work on the next. Make sure you get value for money – if you have invested in a production and it does well, can you arrange a transfer to a larger venue, saving yourself the cost of commissioning new costumes, set and props? Know where the money is coming from for future work and make sure that the company is able to invest when the right opportunity comes along.

3. Be pragmatic.
You can’t achieve everything – at least, not at first. If your budget only stretches to a few hundred pounds you can’t sign up to a contract with a venue that charges you thousands. Approach backers openly and honestly; always remember that you are auditioning sponsors just as they are auditioning you – is this the right sponsor for you? – Are you after the same thing? Think carefully about the structure of your operation – do you prefer to freelance or work solely with one company? How can that company grow over time?

4. Do good business.
All opportunities in the performing arts involve a degree of marketing and good business sense. As a producer you have to balance your own and your company’s agenda against the demands of suppliers, venue managers and publicists. Your aim should be to develop good, long term working relationships. If good people want to work with you again, that sets you up nicely for the future. You should also take care to remain involved with the company’s work – you can’t do your job unless you regularly talk to directors and designers and get excited about the work the company is creating.

Producing your own work can be very exciting: you get to help set the direction of a company, take on the projects you’ve long nurtured in the back of your mind, and do things the way you think they should be done. In order to be successful, however, there’s a lot to get right, and you will have to put in a lot of time and energy, and be prepared to deal with setbacks. Ultimately, if you’re in charge, it’s you who will have to face up to the consequences if things go wrong. Get it right, however, and the rewards are well worth the wait.

After a lot of hard work and many chocolate biscuits, here it is: the shiny new BBC Performing Arts Fund website complete with blog!

The blog will be the place to come for updates about all things BBC Performing Arts Fund including latest news on our grants,  tips and advice from experts in the business and updates on previous grant winners.

We are also delighted to announce that our new Community Dance scheme opens for applications today!  The scheme invites community dance groups across the UK to apply for a grant to help them develop their skills and try out something new.

So have a play around, find out all about our new grants for dance, and read about some of the amazing individuals and groups that have benefitted from our help over the years including Adele, Andreya Triana and Lotek.