Marketing Copy – Short Description (48 words)
Supermarkets, prisons, castles, ships – nowhere is off-limits for Street Orchestra Live! With a mission to take orchestral music to everyone, anywhere, Street Orchestra Live gives free performances in public spaces and is committed  to offering concerts to communities with little or no opportunity to hear live music.

Marketing Copy – Longer Description (127 words)
Supermarkets, prisons, castles, ships – nowhere is off-limits for Street Orchestra Live! With a mission to take orchestral music to everyone, anywhere, Street Orchestra Live gives free performances in public spaces and is committed to offering concerts to communities with little or no opportunity to hear live orchestral music.

Playing between 4 to 6 concerts each day, the 40-piece ensemble has toured around the North East, North West, London, the East Midlands and East Sussex brightening the days of thousands of people along the way with their inimitable passion for their music, which covers styles from classical, big band, pop and hip-hop. Founded in 2016, Street Orchestra Live is a registered charity whose members come from across the country twice a year to tour cities, towns and communities.

Extended Copy Suitable for Funding Applications
Street Orchestra Live (SOL) is a 40-piece orchestra of emerging musicians with a mission to take orchestral music to everyone, anywhere. With a set-up time of around 5 minutes, SOL gives 4-6 performances per day, with the aim of captivating as wide an audience as possible through performances of music of all times and styles. Across 5 successful tours, the orchestra has performed c.120 gigs and concerts, reaching thousands of people in parks, hospices, detention centres, public squares, care homes and train stations.

SOL performs in a totally different way to any other orchestra – more welcoming and friendly than a traditional orchestral concert, with no barrier between players and public. SOL brings free, high quality music to communities who rarely have exposure to live orchestral music, (e.g. hospices, refugee centres, prisons etc.)

In 2016/2017, SOL completed two London tours, performing for the public in venues such as Homerton Library and King’s Cross Station, as well as building partnerships with local services to reach specific audiences including autistic children and asylum seekers. One of these tours was themed Music & Migration, and SOL performed music by refugee and migrant composers – from Handel to Kurt Weill, Bartók to The Fugees. We welcomed Jean Paul Samputu, a Rwandan refugee and one of the world’s most prominent African artists, as our vocal soloist.

SOL also toured the Midlands in 2018, performing in Stratford-upon-Avon, Coventry and Leicester. Partners included Coventry Cathedral and Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

SOL also runs weekend events, one-off concerts and community projects, including a performance as part of Leicester’s Black History Month Celebrations (2017), and accompanying young street performers from disadvantaged backgrounds in East London, as part of the #Artskicker Awards project (2018).

Most recently SOL toured the North East (ACE funded) in July 2018, performing 31 times, across eight local authority areas, reaching over 10,000 people, and Liverpool/North West (ACE funded) in January 2019.

We will also engage with the wider public through pop-up performances which will transform public spaces such as shopping centres and public transport into surprising concert “venues” where anyone passing by can enjoy a free and vibrant performance.

There is a repertoire list of c.20 works of 2-10 minutes duration ranging from Baroque to Disco, Romantic to Hip-hop. Each performance is takes into account the performance context and target audience. We will ensure that the orchestra has ample repertoire to choose from, ensuring that performances can be tweaked and/or expanded according to the needs or request of each specific audience.

We do not seek out normal orchestral music audiences – although we hope they too will be inspired by the SOL project. Instead, we will take music to those who do not – and/or cannot – usually experience orchestral music.

We will encourage audiences to participate in performances – by conducting the orchestra, trying out instruments, dancing and playing orchestral ‘games’. SOL performances are participatory in all senses of the word.

SOL staff will wear bright yellow SOL T- shirts, and talk to audiences at all performances, handing out flyers with details of performances and information about SOL – encouraging people to ‘follow’ the orchestra, both on social media and physically on tour.

We will also engage with people through specific workshops. This will include participatory workshops with dementia patients at Age UK, led by the orchestra’s principle oboist Tim Keasley, who specialises in dementia and music.