Deadline: July 1st 2020
Adopt a Music Creator – Now in its 20th year, with over 120 fantastically creative and successful projects between leisure-time music groups and composers to date, we are working with Making Music UK to expand our former Adopt a Composer project for 2020/21 under a new name.
Supported by funding from the PRS Foundation and Philip & Dorothy Green Music Trust, the freshly retitled Adopt a Music Creator programme will celebrate the range and breadth of music being made by music makers and creators in all its forms.
As before, the project pairs Making Music members – leisure-time choirs, bands, orchestras and ensembles – with a music creator for up to a year leading to a premiere, a recording and a possible radio broadcast.
Adopt a Music Creator is a creative journey that lasts up to a year. Music creators have the opportunity to get to know performing groups and write a piece especially for them to premiere, while groups have the chance to contribute to the creation of a new work by some of the UK’s most promising music creators. Each pairing is assigned an experienced mentor to support and guide the music creator and group, and help the creative process run smoothly.
“We have all benefited enormously and learned a huge amount about ourselves and our potential and also about how contemporary music can be presented to new audiences” – The Fretful Federation Mandolin Orchestra
In 2020/21 for the first time, alongside the usual pairing of one group and one creator, places will be available for two groups to apply to work together with a matched music creator, and we are also able to offer groups the opportunity to select their own music creator.
What do music creators gain?
- Exciting and unique experience of composing with a leisure-time music group
- A working relationship with a musical director
- Benefit from the knowledge and experience of an assigned music creator-mentor
- Exposure to wider contacts and audiences
- Two music creator skills days hosted by Sound and Music
- The opportunity to have your work recorded and broadcast
- An understanding of the collaborative process of creating new music with leisure-time music groups and the knowledge and confidence to do it again
Applications for music creators are now open. Click here for more information and to apply.
Music Creator Award
If your group has commissioned new work within the last year and worked with a great music creator you think deserves the recognition, you can nominate them for Making Music’s brand new award.
The Best Music Creator for a Leisure-Time Group award has been created to celebrate all the wonderful collaborations we know are happening all the time across the leisure-time music world.
The award will be launching later this year.
Adopt a Music Creator builds on the collaborative relationship between music creator and group that has been at the heart of the Adopt a Composer project. Get a taste of the thinking behind some previous projects…
Recordings of most of the pieces written for the Adopt a Composer project were broadcast on BBC Radio 3. You can listen to these pieces below and on Making Music’s Soundcloud page.
Who supports the project?
The project is funded by the PRS Foundation, Philip and Dorothy Green Trust, and run by Making Music UK in association with Sound and Music.
The PRS Foundation is the largest independent funder for new music in the UK. The foundation provides all the financial backing for the Adopt a Composer scheme.
Making Music is the UK’s number one organisation for leisure-time music.