Our campaign
The St Albans Cathedral Music Trust aims to create an endowment to fund the Cathedral’s music and support its future. The Trust focuses on maintaining a high-quality choral tradition, as St Albans lacks a historic endowment to cover music costs. The Trust seeks to ensure a thriving and financially stable musical life at the Cathedral and aims to develop a leading UK cathedral music programme. Building on 30 years of success, the Trust is committed to supporting a 21st-century music department recognised for excellence, while staying connected to the local community.
We aim to do this through our new campaign, Excellence for Everyone. The campaign has two primary objectives:
1. To ensure the activity of the Cathedral music programme is sustainable, inclusive and nationally and internationally recognised for excellence in everything it does.
2. To take cathedral music beyond the Cathedral’s walls to engage, educate and inspire throughout Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire (the Diocese of St Albans) by launching a far-reaching and sustained partnerships programme.
To achieve our campaign objectives, we need to raise £2.75m by 2030, invested in the following ways:
1. £2m to grow our endowment fund to secure the future of music at St Albans Cathedral.
2. £500k of unrestricted funds, to seed-fund an ambitious sector-leading music partnership programme led by the Cathedral across the Diocese.
3. £250k over five years to support the development of the Trust and its fundraising campaign.
“For centuries, music has enlivened the ministry of welcome of this Cathedral and Abbey Church. Proclaiming the glory and wonder of God, in every generation music here has held people’s hearts in times of sorrow, raised their hearts in times of joy and drawn all people towards the gift and trust of divine love for them and for all of God’s creation.”
The Dean, The Very Revd Jo Kelly-Moore
Why is this important to us
The St Albans Cathedral Music Trust has been inspired by the national charity, the Cathedral Music Trust and its report, “A Future for Cathedral Music”, which highlighted four key impact areas for cathedral music:
1. Spiritual transcendence: cathedral music enriches human experience emotionally, spiritually and aesthetically.
2. Importance in national life: renowned UK cathedral choirs unite people during significant national events through sacred music.
3. Educational and personal development: involvement in cathedral music offers valuable educational benefits for young people.
4. Church worship and mission: cathedral music, especially choral evensong, plays a vital role in Christian worship and has grown in popularity despite declining church attendance.
To maximise their impact, music trusts and cathedrals need to focus on accessibility and participation. Key challenges include:
1. Gender equality: while female participation has increased, progress in leadership opportunities for women in cathedral music has been slower.
2. Socioeconomic and ethnic diversity: music trusts must enhance resources to ensure that cathedral music programmes are accessible to diverse communities.
“I believe that every child should encounter music, and that the wonder and excellence of cathedral music should be shared with everyone we can reach. Here we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the music programme of St Albans Cathedral for our times, sustaining our existing excellence in the Cathedral while planting the seeds of our living musical tradition in Luton, Bedford, market towns and rural communities. Your gift will make this opportunity a reality.”
William Fox, Director of Music, St Albans Cathedral
Why the Trust wants to make a difference
Sustainability of excellence
Being able to sustain excellence in our Cathedral’s music is a primary long-term focus for the Trust. We are deeply grateful to every single Patron and supporter who has invested in our current endowment fund, but the reality of our position is that we need to grow this if we want to achieve and sustain a nationally renowned centre of excellence within and reaching far beyond the walls of St Albans Cathedral.
Capacity to do more
As a volunteer-led trust, we are limited in achieving some of our fundraising, development and sustainability goals because we do not have the staff structure and capacity in place to work to our potential. If we are to achieve our future objectives, we need to work to invest in the effectiveness of our trust
“As Trustees, we have a passion for seeking out relationships and means by which we can ensure music excellence at St Albans Cathedral is not hindered by the lack of financial resources. This is why our forward-looking campaign is both exciting and challenging. Do please get in touch and come on this journey with us.”
Lionel Wallace, Chairman, St Albans Cathedral Music Trust
What the Trust is going to do
Our Plan: Excellence for Everyone
1. To ensure the St Albans Cathedral music programme is sustainable, inclusive and nationally and internationally recognised for excellence in everything it does.
Our primary goals for this objective are:
• Safeguarding the funding of the St Albans Cathedral music programme to the end of this century.
• Ensuring everyone involved in our music programme has a life-changing, positive encounter with cathedral music.
• Funding the provision of rehearsal spaces for our choirs.
• Growing the support team required to enable the St Albans Cathedral music programme to offer far-reaching excellence.
• Ensuring those from diverse backgrounds know about the amazing opportunity of becoming a chorister and are encouraged to do so.
• Ensuring those from diverse backgrounds face no financial barrier to becoming a chorister.
• Ensuring our musical infrastructure is secure, maintaining our world-famous organ, enhancing the provision of instruments.
To achieve these goals, we will need to grow our endowment fund by £2m by 2030. We anticipate development of the Trust and fundraising activity costs of £250k over five years.
2. To take cathedral music beyond the Cathedral’s walls into new places, spaces and communities, embracing the power of cathedral music to engage, educate and inspire throughout Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire (the Diocese of St Albans) by funding a far-reaching and sustained partnerships programme.
Our goal is to fund a complete Excellence for Everyone partnerships programme, expected to include the following:
• Singing programme (run by Head of Music Partnerships, to be recruited)
o Classroom singing sessions in partner schools around the Diocese
o Weekly after-school choir in
• St Albans
• Luton
• Bedford
o Holiday courses in St Albans, Luton and Bedford
• Keyboard programme (run by the Assistant Director of Music, a Cathedral-funded post)
o Classroom melodica sessions in partner schools around the Diocese
o Piano taster lessons for interested students
o Organ taster lessons after two years of piano lessons
o Chorister organ teaching
o Cathedral junior organ scholarships
The singing programme aims to offer singing experience to hundreds of children in classrooms every week, with the opportunity to remain singing every week outside school with after-school satellite choirs.
The keyboard programme aims to offer a complete route up from beginner keyboard player in a school session in Luton to junior organ scholar at the Cathedral.
Our initial focus will be on areas of social deprivation, measured by free school meals take-up.
The programme is designed to be partially self-funding, whereby schools gradually pay for the singing and keyboard sessions they receive through a service-level agreement.
To achieve these goals, we will need to raise £500k.
- Initial set up costs = £49.5k
- Annual programme costs over three years = £450.5k
How
We can only do this together, with you, our generous, loyal and invested supporters.
If you are passionate about cathedral music, if you are passionate about supporting excellence in cathedral music at St Albans, if you are passionate about cathedral music having the widest and deepest impact, please consider helping us and enabling Excellence for Everyone.
How you can support Excellence for Everyone and help us raise £2.75 million
By becoming a…
Pioneer
Pioneer donors will provide the seed funding for our campaign, inspiring others to give and giving the campaign its initial lift off.
Foundation
Foundation donors will provide the foundations of our fundraising effort and the achievement of our Excellence for Everyone objectives.
Building Block
Building block donors will provide building blocks to our fundraising and campaign efforts, allowing us to build Excellence for Everyone and start to realise some of our campaign objectives.
Momentum
Momentum donors will give the campaign fundraising and objectives life, fuelling the momentum of what we need to do, to meet the challenges and opportunities we face.
Ambassador
Ambassador donors will be our champions for Excellence for Everyone in our faith and geographic communities, keeping the campaign alive.
Through a net annual gift of…
And by gift aiding your donation to have a gross annual gift of… £50,000
Contact us
To request more information, become a donor or make a donation, please complete and return this form to St Albans Cathedral Music Trust, Cathedral House, Sumpter Yard, St Albans, AL1 1BY and we will be in touch with you.
I am interested in becoming a:
• Pioneer Donor
• Foundation Donor
• Building Block Donor
• Momentum Donor
• Ambassador Donor
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St Albans Cathedral Music Trust [Sort code: 20-74-09 Acct No: 50922226]
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Privacy policy: St Albans Cathedral Music Trust takes your privacy seriously. We collect, process and hold personal information only for the activities of the Trust and the Patrons’ programme. We will not share your data with anyone else without your consent. Our privacy policy can be viewed at www.stalbanscathedral.org.
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If you would like to speak in more detail about the St Albans Cathedral Music Trust (No. 1051072), please do contact us:
Email: music-trust@stalbanscathedral.org or development@stalbanscathedral.org Telephone: 01727 890231 /StAlbansCathedralOfficial
