Friends Spring Newsletter 2025 - Services For Education

Welcome to the Spring 2025 edition of our Friends of Our Ensembles newsletter, where we will be sharing a bit more insight into the world of our Ensembles and what’s been happening.

SPRING 2025 EDITION

We’ve had a number of new Friends join since our first newsletter in January, so welcome to those who have signed up. These newsletters are an opportunity for different members of our SFE Team to share some of their highlights from the Spring term, and what we are still looking forward to over the coming months.

Lots has been happening since our last newsletter, which you can read about below.

A Few Words from Charlotte

What an incredible spring term it has been for our young musicians! The term has been filled with outstanding performances, remarkable progress, and wonderful musical experiences across all our ensembles. Some highlights from the term.

National Recognition

We are thrilled to announce that five of our ensembles have been selected to perform at the prestigious Music for Youth National Festival in Birmingham in July, recognising their exceptional standards and dedication to musical excellence.

Congratulations to Birmingham Schools’ Training Percussion Ensemble, Birmingham Schools’ Guitar Ensemble, Birmingham Schools’ String Sinfonia, Birmingham Schools’ Double Reed Ensemble, and Birmingham Schools’ Symphony Orchestra.

Area Gala Triumphs

Our Area Gala series showcased the talent and dedication of young musicians from every corner of Birmingham, with over 90 schools participating in performances ranging from string quartets to rock bands. Held at venues including South and City College, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, these concerts gave us a glimpse of the future of music-making across the city.

Growth in School-Based Ensembles

We’re delighted to report that our school-based ensemble programme continues to flourish, with over 90 active groups across Birmingham. This represents significant growth from previous years and reflects our commitment to making ensemble music-making opportunities accessible to all young people.

The stage at our recent Outdoor Festival

Looking Back at the Outdoor Festival

Our SFE Outdoor Festival at the MAC was a resounding success, made even more special by being completely funded through donations from our generous SFE supporters. Blessed with beautiful weather and exceptional musical performances, it was wonderful to see so many familiar faces in the audience, along with curious passers-by from the park who stopped to enjoy the music. This event truly helped showcase Birmingham’s best-kept secret – our outstanding ensembles!

Looking Ahead to Youth Proms

We are now preparing for our spectacular Youth Proms at Symphony Hall in July. The programme promises to be exciting, featuring our Primary Choir performing a Motown medley, while our massed ensemble will present an energetic selection including “Smoke on the Water”, the Doctor Who theme, and “Funkytown”. This event will be another wonderful celebration of our young musicians’ achievements and a wonderful way to end the year.

Charlotte Buxton

Deputy Head of Music Service, Head of Ensembles and Designated Safeguarding Lead

Richard’s Reflections

It was fabulous to see so many examples of inspiring music making during the last term. Our Central Ensembles showcase on the 22nd and 23rd March enabled our young musicians to create fantastic music in another top-quality performance venue – the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. It is still a huge source of pride to me that we give our students the opportunity to make lifelong memories by performing in such prestigious venues – we should never underestimate the power of this. From a musical perspective, it was equally great to see the progression that our students had made from their first performance of the year in the Autumn Term. This is down to the hard work and dedication of our dedicated team of conductors and tutors, who strive at every rehearsal to get the best from our young musicians – it was great to see this hard work paying dividends.

In an incredibly busy spring term, we also saw our programme of Area Galas. Across seven concerts, and multiple venues, we saw the breadth and depth of our school-based ensemble programme. This was a fantastic opportunity for these ensembles to show what is undertaken on a weekly basis in schools. Our staff put in a huge amount of effort to rehearse these groups and seeing the joy (and in some cases fear!) on the face of young people as they performed in public – in some cases for the very first time – was truly uplifting.

As I write this, I have just returned from our Outdoor Festival, where we treated to a full day of performances from our Central Ensembles. We were blessed with good weather, fantastic music and plenty of ice cream – a perfect bank holiday weekend afternoon. Thank you to all of you for your amazing support of our ensembles, and here’s to more musical brilliance this term.

Richard Mabbott

Head of Music Service

Fundraising Fun

Once again, it has been great to work alongside our Ensembles Team at the recent concerts. Not only has it offered an opportunity to see our young musicians take to the stage, but it has also enabled us to meet and talk with some parents and continue to raise the profile of SFE as a charity. Over the course of our Spring Showcase and Area Galas series, we raised over £4,500 towards the ongoing costs of running our Music Ensembles, which is an incredible amount.

As already mentioned, our Outdoor Festival was a great success and a pleasure to be involved in. This year’s event (which costs us around £5,000 to host) was fully funded thanks to the generosity of our supporters, helping us remove the barrier of cost for musicians and audiences alike. Donations made on the day, alongside those made through ticket bookings, CAF or Friends of our Ensembles sign ups helped raise nearly £2,000, which is another fantastic amount.

Thank you to those of you who will be reading a ‘Friends’ Newsletter for the first time, having only recently joined. The fact we have had more parents donate and sign up to be a Friend of Our Ensembles shows how people really value the opportunities we offer for their children and are keen to support us where we can. A couple of parents have spoken to me about how their businesses can support us, which is something we are looking forward to discussing further.

Bearthoven Bear

Enjoying the pre concert atmosphere

Tell Us Your Story

We are currently gathering personal stories to show the real difference our music-based activities make in young people’s lives — and we would love to include yours.

As your child is part of our Ensembles, we’d love to hear what being involved has meant to them. It could be around a special moment for them, the difference music makes to their lives or perhaps multiple generations in your family have been part of our Ensembles.

It doesn’t need to be long — just a few heartfelt words can help others understand the true power of music.

Every story is a reminder of why we do what we do and could be shared (without full names) in funding applications, on our website, and across our social media, helping us reach more people and continue our work.

If you have something you would like to share, please sent it to [email protected]

Looking Forward

We are looking forward to our Summer Youth Proms taking place in July, the highlight of our musical year. Please note details of which Ensemble is performing on which date will be communicated separately by the Ensembles Team.

14^th-17^th July – Summer Youth Proms (Birmingham Symphony Hall)

Booking information, including how to use your Friends of Our Ensembles free tickets discounts (where applicable) will be sent separately.