RBCS Chair’s Report on 2011

I am delighted to report that 2011 has been another very good year for RBCS, thanks to the efforts and contributions of you all, and, in many cases, your nearest and dearest. In particular thanks again go to Sue Heath-Downey for her musical leadership and to committee members for all their work through the year:

We performed our usual three concerts, with musicians to accompany us at every one of them. We performed on five other occasions, including the Entrance Shaft (Grand Entrance Hall) of Brunel’s Thames Tunnel and Udderbelly on South Bank. We commissioned a video of the Shaft performance, which incidentally got us a mention on national radio and local TV news. Members had other opportunities to sing at the Brunel Museum, in Normandy and at three summer salons led by Sue in July/August. That’s quite a range of venues and formats.

We aimed high with our musical ambitions. We performed the UK première of Paul Sarcich’s Percussion Mass and the second performance of Philip Norman’s Carol Interludes, on both occasions with the composer in the audience! We sang Mozart’s powerful Requiem and Coleridge-Taylor’s expressive Hiawatha and a range of shorter pieces and songs.

We have put a lot of energy into our publicity efforts, happily with some success, witness the appearance of the Lady Mayor at our Christmas concert in full robes, very stately.  Singers and audience numbers were both up on 2010. At no charge, one of our supporters produced for us a very smart new website, and RBCS now is on Twitter as well as Facebook. We have invested in banners to publicise our concerts, made contact with local Tenants & Residents Associations, and distributed flyers at local Community Council meetings. And that’s on top of the sterling efforts made by choir members and friends to spread the word.

There is a social angle to the choir, of course, and in addition to the after-rehearsal gathering in the Mayflower pub, and refreshments after performances, we organised our first and very successful summer barbecue.

We have improved how the choir runs itself. We produced our first Welcome Pack for new members, agreed a Diversity Statement and are feeling our way towards creating an effective ‘voice rep’ role to support singers. We have added new collections of madrigals, European Sacred Music and Opera Choruses to our scores library.

We benefited from funding from a private sponsor for musicians at the Spring concert, from Rotherhithe Community Council for the Brunel Tunnel shaft performances, from Grassroots Grants to pay for our musicians at the summer concert, more from Grassroots Grants to invest in scores, and from United St Saviour’s Charity to help with running costs. To all of those funders we are extremely grateful, as we are to Time & Talents, St Mary’s Church Rotherhithe and St James, Bermondsey, who provide us with excellent venues for rehearsal and performance. The funding has enabled us to reach higher, and to plan further ahead, knowing that we will be able comfortably to cover our core costs.

All of this provides a good foundation for 2012. Already I can see some challenges:

• Becoming a registered charity, as we are now required to do
• Securing further grant funding – although things are much tighter generally, being a registered charity will give us access to new private sources of funding.

There will be new opportunities too, and I’m looking forward to those even more than the challenges. We are already exploring how we can best take advantage of the opportunities that the London Olympics will bring and hope to be able to develop our local repertoire and perform it more widely in the area.

Thank you all for your support.

Clare Birks
RBCS Chair 2011-12

7 February 2012

Chairman’s Report on 2010

It’s been a very good year for RBCS. There have been ups and downs of course, but on balance a very good year indeed.

We have adopted a strapline ‘where your local community comes together to sing’ which we feel communicates what we’re about. Being inclusive in this way opens the door to ‘community support’ funding which has been a great benefit.

In the last year the RBCS committee has focused on becoming a smooth operation. We don’t always quite succeed, but we are definitely getting there. The results are great, but it has placed extra demands on committee members. So I must start with huge thank you to all the committee members for their time and energy and support.

There is another huge thank you to be said to Sue, our Musical Director, who continues to lead us cheerily into all sorts of musical adventures. I’d like to highlight just a few from 2010. In March, there was the Cherubini Requiem which we performed last spring, with 14 musicians, a really big work, musically and emotionally. Then in April, we had a collective walk-on part for a week at the Lyric, Hammersmith singing Bright Eyes. Come September we were rehearsing a modern Australian work for its UK premiere. But on the day, our musicians were stuck in snow in Surrey, so no premiere. With Rotherhithe deep in snow and singers struck down with flu, Sue rallied us, rehearsed us through an alternative programme and delivered a thoroughly enjoyable concert.

In addition to staging our own 3 concerts, we do at least 7 other performances each year. In 2010, at the Lyric theatre, at the Blue (twice), at Surrey Quays, at the Bermondsey Street festival (second time), at St Mary’s church and at Southwark Arts Forum events. It is very pleasing to reach a bigger audience through these performances and our contribution is always well received.

On the financial side we’ve secured three grants and generous support from some anonymous sponsors brought to us by Sue. The grant funds have enabled us to invest in the choir, eg buying scores for our library and risers for the tenors and basses. The sponsorship has enabled us to be much more musically ambitious, paying for the musicians for the Cherubini, for example. We have in our scores library a useful collection of compilations which we can use again and again.

We’ve expanded the opportunities for choir members to sing solos or perform in small groups, and to write and present musical introductions at our concerts. We are including programme notes and translations where appropriate in our programmes. So there have been benefits for choir members and audience.

We have expanded our much-admired website. Everything is there, from this term’s information sheet to our Child Safeguarding Policy. It has become our public face in many ways and brings to us not only members but also performing opportunities.

In another line of development we have strengthened our links to local organisations and that has started to bring new opportunities our way. Time & Talents, the Brunel Tunnel Museum, St James and St Mary’s, Southwark Arts Forum, Southwark Council, Rotherhithe Community Council and others.

We adopted a new constitution and joined the national organisation for amateur music, Making Music. This helps us find scores for hire, musicians, programme notes, insurance and expertise.

All of these developments I hope have added to the pleasure and enjoyment that the choir brings to members and others. There is more, much more, to come in 2011, with our postponed UK premiere of the Sarcich Percussion Mass and planned performances underground and overseas.

To sustain all this, we need to have 35-40 choir members every term and attract 80-100 in audience to our concerts. Telling the world about what we do is essential and for a community choir, word of mouth works best, so please do talk about the choir to your friends, colleagues and relatives, and invite them warmly along.

Thank you all for your support.

Clare Birks
RBCS Chair 2010-11

Chairman’s Report on 2009

Many thanks to all choir members and committee members and to Sue, our Musical Director, for their enthusiasm, energy and commitment through the year, which contributed to a very successful year in 2009.

We did more performances – as well as our 3 own end of term concerts, Southwark Cathedral Songs of Praise, choir contribution to the scratch Rutter performance at the Albert Hall in the summer, a performance at the Bermondsey Street Festival, the Guys and St Thomas Charity Trust concert in Southwark Cathedral and carols in Trafalgar Square. That makes 8, and it looks as if we may top that in 2010 as we have already done one performance at the Southwark Arts Forum AGM in the Biscuit Factory, and have the opportunity to perform at the opening of the John Bull arch at the Blue in Bermondsey later this month. All performances have been very well received.

We were more musically ambitious. We tackled Mozart and Britten. We formed the RBCS Chamber Orchestra and did our first performance. We’ll have the orchestra with us again at our spring concert in 2010 and we are hoping to perform the UK premiere of an Australian work (Percussion Mass by Paul Sarcich) in the summer term.

We had more members, well over 30 members in the autumn term. Bigger numbers are good as they give us a wider choice of repertoire and a greater ability to field groups to do additional performances, as well as being more sociable and bringing in more income. So we encourage new members at all times.

We provided solo singing opportunities for choir members who auditioned and sang at two of the concerts. Well done to all those who rose to the challenge. There will be further solo opportunities in the future.

We worked harder at our publicity for concerts and for singers through posters, flyers and emails and won ourselves a higher profile locally, and a bigger audience for spring and winter performances. Sadly numbers were a bit low for the summer term concert.

We strengthened our organisational capability:

• we were successful in securing grant funding, and will apply for more in 2010
• we’re in the process of transferring control of our bank account from Time & Talents (where it has been for historical reasons), and will get down to some financial planning in the coming months
• we had our first go at a 12 month repertoire plan (and hope to get more input from members for that when we do the next plan in May
• we have invested in scores, which we hire out to choir members
• we’ve been producing an information sheet and a rehearsal plan at the beginning of every term so that we all know what’s happening
• making more use of email and the website.

So once again, thanks to all members and supporters and especially to Sue. Let’s look forward to an even more successful year in 2010.

Clare Birks
Chair

2 March 2010