| Community involvement | Sponsorship opportunities | Fund for young musicians | The Nancy Carr Prize |

Community Involvement

Each year the Cossington Concert Trust faces the challenges of attracting high calibre artists and committed audiences to the series.  Our venues are intimate and our ticket prices modest by London standards, so the financial tolerances are narrow.  We have from the start been fortunate in our collaborations – in particular with the church wardens of our benefice, but also with those associated with village halls and other Polden Hills organisations who have always been willing to find a way forward.  Ingenuity and willingness to work are never in short supply, but with greater variety of programming comes additional costs.

Cossington Concerts has been fortunate to gain the patronage and support of Cyrus and Mary Clark, who came forward when we launched the series, then helped to ensure the success of Mozart at the Manor and now help the Trust on an annual basis. 

We are enormously grateful to the many local, often anonymous donors who have provided funding for the hire of pianos and artists and for educational events. 

Although the series started off with small grants from South West Arts and Awards for All, Cossington Concerts is considered to be too small to attract regular support from Arts Council bodies.

There are, however, wonderful opportunities for local organisatons and businesses in the Bridgwater area to support the work of Cossington Concerts. 

• The accountancy firm of Michael J. Dodden, for example, has for several years audited our annual accounts.
• The retail sheepskin and leather goods outlet in Street and Glastonbury, Four Seasons, has provided sponsorship for concerts, Shakespeare plays and Mozart at the Manor. 
• Barclays Bank sponsored the printing for one of our series brochures and matched the £600 we raised for the Myelin Project (registered charity no. 1000614) during the Mozart Festival.  Barclays Commercial provided sponsorship for the Shakespeare play in 2008 and, with Barclays Wealth sponsored the opening concert of the 2009 season at Millfield School.
• The Millfield School Department of Music generously sponsored the Steven Isserlis Masterclass in 2009. 
• Pardoes Solicitors of Bridgewater and Taunton sponsored the opening concert of the 2010 season at Queen's College.
• A gift from The Sidney Lawton Music Trust (Queen's College) made it possible to offer the 2010 Gwilym Simcock Trio masterclass free-of-charge.
• The Nancy Carr Gift in 2010 has enabled us to offer free entry to students up to the age of 19 to all series concerts as well as to establish an annual Nancy Carr Prize.
• Pardoes Solicitors and Aspen Waite Accountants sponsored the opening concert of the 2011 season at St Mary's Church, Bridgwater.

In 2007 Cossington Concerts joined The Countess of Munster Musical Trust Recital Scheme, entitling us to host one of their artists each year.  The Recital Scheme is an enlightened partnership programme that gives emerging artists opportunities to perform while greatly reducing the financial burden to the host organisations.  This opportunity, in turn, inspired our trustees to make the sponsorship work for local youngsters via a Fund for Young Musicians.   The profits of our annual Countess of Munster Concert go directly to the Fund.  We are grateful to the many private individuals who have already come forward with generous gifts (with Gift Aid) to the Fund, some with a commitment to give annually, but we need further support in order to continue this important work.

Gwilym Simcock Masterclass

Cossington Trustees with Pardoes Solicitors

Cyrus and Mary Clark

This past season we mounted our first public appeal to enable Cossington Concerts to present the new Cossington Village Hall with a piano. With the generous support of members of our audience, friends and that of three trusts – The Golsoncott Foundation and the Stephen Clark 1957 Charitable Trust together with our own – Cossington Concerts purchased and renovated a 40-year-old Kawai boudoir grand piano, which was kindly offered for sale to Cossington Concerts by Donald Kuhn, a retired local piano teacher.

Immediately following the inaugural concert, Julie Anne Sadie and Donald Kuhn formally presented the piano to Geoff Cross, Chairman of the Village Hall Management Committee. In the background of the photo the brass plaque thanking all those who made the acquisition is visible. Alexander Karpeyev then gave the 180-strong audience a virtuoso performance of Brahms’s Paganini Variations.

It takes organisation to develop and deliver a consistently high standard of events.  The trustees of Cossington Concerts work year round, giving of their time, effort and expertise to ensure the future of the series and related initiatives.  As in every good voluntary organisation, there is always room for someone new.  Trustees do occasionally retire and among them Ian Rix, who served as chairman after Stanley Sadie and took many of the photos displayed on this website, Martin Peters, who masterminded sound and lighting installations for many of our events, and Audrey Stradling, a founding trustee who continues to serve quietly in the background, deserve special thanks.

Among the many individuals outside the Cossington Concert Trust who have given generously of their time and expertise, one person in particular shines out: Mark Ransom, a London-based harpsichord builder who hires and tunes for many of the major early music groups and festivals in Britain, faithfully maintained the Manor harpsichord and, more recently, has brought his own instruments to use on numerous occasions. His support for the series, right from the start, provided enormous encouragement to us and confidence to artists that they would be well served when they came to Cossington.

With your help – sponsorship, partnership, gifts-in-kind, annual and one-off donations with Gift Aid – we can keep the series on a firm financial footing and pursue further ways of bringing music to the community.

In the 2011 season we were grateful to Dicke and Bobby Sharp for lending their beautiful home to us for the Cabaret Evening that, in addition to the memorable evening of cabaret music performed by Katie Bray and William Vann, raised money for both the Fund for Young Musicians and Help for Heroes.

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Geoff Cross, Julie Anne Sadie and Donald Kuhn

Alexander Karpeyev