Kate Fearnley describes her voluntary experiences as Awards Administrator for Making Music.
For 70 years Making Music has been supporting and championing voluntary music making. With over 200 voluntary committee members across the UK representing a team of seven volunteers working regularly at the national office in London and a full-time staff complement of 15, Making Music is a network that relies on the skill, experience and time of the voluntary sector.
For 15 years Kate Fearnley crossed the Thames every Wednesday to Making Musics national office in the Spitalfields area of London. As the Awards Administrator for the Making Music Award for Young Concert Artists (AYCA), she was responsible for promoting the awards, setting up auditions, producing the publicity, distributing details to Making Musics 2,400 member groups, booking the artists, tailoring contracts and generally ensuring all ran smoothly.
Kate explains what this involvement has meant to her personally: The Making Music Award is a huge benefit for the music promoters, choirs and orchestras as well as for the young musicians. Because of the subsidised fee they are able to engage first class performers without breaking their perilously small budgets. They can often say Oh yes, we heard so-and-so before they became famous and they enjoyed being here so much that they still come back to us.
Every handful of music brochures I pick up from venues has a selection of the dozens of young artists who have matured through the award scheme. I know I can be a terrible name-dropper, but I am so thrilled to think that I have helped these young musicians establish their careers. So many of them have become family friends as well; I have delightful memories of Stephen DePledges tiny son Jonty kicking a football about in my garden with my huge grandsons or Bobby Chen whipping cream in our kitchen one day when a planned strawberry-tea garden party was a complete disaster as the heavens opened!
The very greatest highlight of my years as Award Administrator was the inaugural concert for the Alfreda Hodgson Bursary at the Wigmore Hall. Sixteen famous singers, several of them former Award winners, sang Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music. Alfreda was a family friend and the idea for the Bursary came up one evening (over a cup of tea) long before she was ill, so I have always felt very privileged to have been involved with this.
If you are interested in a voluntary role at Making Music, contact Sarah Rogers, Head of Membership Services.
e: sarah@makingmusic.org.uk; t: 0870 903 3780.