We were invited to take part in the National Flute Choir of Great Britain Festival in Birmingham March 2nd/3rd 2024. Twenty of our members were interested in attending this event, including several young people, but the cost was prohibitive. To make this accessible for all our members we were looking to secure funding to contribute towards the registration fee and accommodation. The day consisted of several workshops, including low flutes & piccolos, a massed flute choir performance and 2 short concerts, which we prepared a 10minperformance for. Over 200 flute players from 15 flute choirs attended the event.
The grant of £2400 was spent on both the registration fee for 20 members and the costs towards two nights accommodation at a local Premier Inn close to the University where the flute festival took place.
“I feel proud that Flutes & Co is an inclusive group, so feel that any effort to make it more inclusive by supporting with costs such as this is so important, and really strengthens our inclusive ethos’’.
The project was of particular benefit to one of our younger members who has a range of complex special educational needs, including speech and language difficulties, auditory and visual processing difficulties, and dyslexia. Her parents who were grateful of the financial assistance which enabled them to accompany her on the trip confirmed that “she has found school hard for her to stand out, but the inclusivity of Flutes&Co has meant that she has always felt welcome and an important part of the group. It has helped her to grow in confidence and this has helped her to choose music as a future career. Birmingham gave her the opportunity to play with the group in front of both amateur and professional flute playersand she said it was a “really amazing experience” and that she felt an “important part of the team.” They went on to say that she was quite “taken back with the amount of flute players there from all sorts of backgrounds” and that “It has inspired her love of flute further and made her feel more confident and excited about where her journey with the flute will take her.” Whilst at the University she had the opportunity to discuss their music degree and met one of the flute tutors from Napier university who discussed their music degree course with her.