Our future

The fall-out from Covid-19, the after-effects of Brexit and the ongoing climate crisis mean that we need to evolve.

We are fortunate that our digital presence, through YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, has been a priority for us for over a decade and has attracted millions of viewers from across the globe.  This impressive foundation has enabled us to adapt rapidly to the present circumstances and create our online digital platform, OAE Player, which launched in October 2020. OAE Player increases our global audience reach and revenue and also provides us with a distribution platform for commercial educational resources.

In the summer of 2020 we moved into a new home in Acland Burghley School (ABS) in Tufnell Park, London. Generously funded by The Linbury Trust and a small group of individual donors, this partnership between the arts and education is without parallel in the UK. Given present circumstances, we are confident that now is the time to invest in our local community and the musical education of the next generation.

With your help we plan to grow by focussing our work on three core initiatives:

A new approach to live performance and touring

• We will adapt our touring model to embrace the constraints of Covid-19 and Brexit by developing new proposals for UK and European venues that include multiple performances of the same programmes in indoor and outdoor venues
• We will cut environmental costs by building on the success of our 2020 European green tour and devising international tours around surface travel wherever possible
• We will resume and develop our residencies at the Southbank Centre and Kings Place to include access and programming initiatives that involve more diverse audiences

An enhanced education offer

• We will develop our unparalleled new partnership with Acland Burghley School with creative school-wide, cross-curricular initiatives
• We will enhance our education programme for our existing national partners, with a new online and in-person audience mix
• We will invest in the next generation by creating new digital education resources with global commercial potential

A new global digital platform

• We will expand OAE Player to present more high-quality musical performances that promote our distinctive narrative, and provide engrossing educational and discursive content
• We will develop and promote our YouTube content, to reach beyond our existing global audience of over 3.6m viewers

These initiatives will cost the OAE an additional £300,000 over the next eighteen months.

We are seeking contributions to realise this vision.  Thanks to three key donors’ appreciation of the importance of this work to our future, we are delighted to announce that all donations up to a total of £150,000 will be matched, making your contribution doubly powerful.