BIG GIVE CHRISTMAS
CHALLENGE 2023
RAISING THE VOICE OF COASTAL COMMUNITIES
As part of a major new touring production in partnership with MAST Mayflower Studios, OperaUpClose will engage a network of coastal community singing groups directly in the making of our work, collaborating with experienced specialists and professionals.
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
With your support, we made our Big Give target and raised £12,500! Crucial funds that will help us put community voice at the heart of our work. We look forward to updating you with progress on this project very soon. In the meantime you can watch the Q&A interviews released during the campaign on YouTube.
this year we’re going coastal!
This year our Big Give Christmas Match-Funding Campaign will help us raise crucial funds to support our work with coastal community choirs across the UK.
This new project is a significant development of OperaUpClose’s long-term commitment to community engagement, first seen in our successful and widely praised 2023 re-imagining of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman.
Building and expanding on established relationships with community choirs in multiple locations, this project will see groups explore and record The Last Bit of the Moon, a new companion piece to Vaughan Williams’ one act opera Riders To The Sea, by Michael Betteridge, Antosh Wojcik and Artful Scribe community sirens.
OperaUpClose are delighted to have the opportunity to take part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge. As a match funding campaign every donation is doubled, meaning all supporters can have twice the impact in enabling this project to come to fruition. Artistic Director at OperaUpClose, Flora McIntosh explains:
“The Last Bit of the Moon will be recorded by our growing network of community choirs in coastal and dockside locations of Blackpool, Hull, Bristol, Southampton and London. Supported by the brilliant LGTBQ+ low voiced choir The Sunday Boys, this process will not only bring together communities with shared experience of coastal living, but also connect the burgeoning open access choral community with the male-voice choral tradition long present in the UK. The Last Bit of the Moon will be part of a fully staged touring production, integrating live and recorded performances, projection and sound design, to create a bold aesthetic and compelling new sound world that raises and celebrates the community voice.”
WELL-BEING BENEFITS OF group singing and collaboration
Unemployment, low wages and decades of inequality have caused coastal communities, like Southampton, to have some of the worst health outcomes in the UK. Low engagement in cultural activities with some received perception that opera and music theatre are ‘not for us’, has resulted in the known well-being benefits of group singing in particular often not being felt by the people that need it most.
The funds raised will enable us to engage a network of coastal communities directly in the making of our work in collaboration with experienced professionals. Groups from across the UK will record a new choral prologue to Riders To The Sea in a series of creative singing workshops. The prologue will speak directly to the people who perform it, exploring the realities of modern coastal living and the meaning of family in contemporary society. It will feature as a film in a nationwide tour in 2024.
An extraordinary work of music theatre, Riders To The Sea interrogates huge themes – climate and community, family and home, duty and grieving - that deeply resonate with audiences today. In response to this, The Last Bit of the Moon was developed through community singing and writing workshops in partnership with writer development agency ArtfulScribe, writers/poets collective The Community Sirens and The Sunday Boys. Composer, Conductor and Founder of LGTBQ+ choir, The Sunday Boys, Michael Betteridge said:
“It's been a huge joy to create the partner work The Last Bit of the Moon working with community partners at all stages: devising the libretto, creating the soundworld, and workshopping it to test our ideas. The choral elements of both of these operas provide a space to acknowledge the universality of the experiences of all these characters, whether it's a mother's loss, or a man facing the force of nature, and reminds us that at its core opera is about human experience and emotion.”
ONE DONATION, TWICE THE IMPACT
Big Give runs match funding campaigns which raise millions of pounds for good causes. When the public donates to a charity through a Big Give campaign, they ask funders (philanthropists, foundations or corporates) to match that donation. So £50 from a member of the public, becomes £100 for a good cause.
We already have pledgers who have promise to match funds, and now we have from Tuesday 28th November to Tuesday 5th December to raise the target funds to be matched. In other words, whatever you donate is matched / doubled.
Managing Director at Big Give, Alex Day, said:
“It's an absolute pleasure to have OperaUpClose join us this year for the Big Give Christmas Challenge! Any donations made to OperaUpClose during the campaign will be doubled, which will support their work with coastal community choirs across the UK and reach those that need further engagement in the arts and the mental wellbeing benefits of group singing."
“Artful Scribe is thrilled to join forces with OperaUpClose, bringing together contemporary writing and opera to engage new audiences and celebrate modern culture. We are excited to craft innovative performances that showcase our distinct communities and art forms in unique and captivating ways.”
Matthew West, Artistic Director ArtfulScribe
“Riders to the Sea is such a rich story which really relates to many of the issues we are facing as a country and a planet.”
Ri Baroche, community writer, artful scribe
“Riders to the Sea' is an extraordinary work of music theatre that interrogates huge themes - community, family and grief. Co-creating something fresh and contemporary with coastal communities that is in dialogue with Vaughan Williams is unique and powerful work.”
Michael Betteridge, Composer
we’d love your support
We are forever grateful for the onging support we get from the community locally here in Southampton and across the UK on tour. Please take a moment to donate, join our Big Give mailing list for updates or share this campaign with your network, friends and family.
