Announcement – postponement of July 2021 RVIPW events

Newsletter May 2021

Hello again from all of us on the RVIPW committee.

We have just received the most unwelcome news – that our hard-worked-for Arts Council England funding bid has been rejected.

Prior to this blow, two weeks ago we had word from Westholme Theatre that they were cancelling our booking for July 2021 due to building works at the school – all public hires are cancelled with immediate effect for the rest of the year. That in itself was not entirely insurmountable and we had spent a frantic fortnight finding an alternative venue, which we had just about managed to do.

Then at the end of last week came the news that our ACE funding bid had been rejected. Our ambition to bring recordings of our concerts, recorded live with an audience, to Care homes, Health Workers and our supporters who may be unable to attend in person free of charge was not considered eligible for a grant.

Given the uncertainty surrounding audiences returning and social distancing requirements still being in place and the unknown factor of how many would buy tickets for a different venue we were really depending on this ACE funding to ensure that we didn’t make a huge loss this year, so the rejection of that application was the final blow – in order to be sure of having enough funds of our own left at all, we have no choice but to postpone until 2022. This is a massive blow as we had been so hopeful of being one of the first festivals to be up-and-running this summer and had put in such a lot of hard work to make it happen if we could – sadly, in the end, it just wasn’t viable.

However – undaunted we will start planning for the next festival, 13th – 16th July 2022 – by which time we will hopefully be back at the usual venue. All performers who we had booked (Benjamin Grosvenor, Steven Osborne, Lauren Zhang, The Martin Roscoe Trio, Scott Brothers and students) have already been re-invited.As we have little to offer this year we are holding Friends and Supporter’s details and will ask for your support next year, but for this year we won’t be asking for your subscriptions.

However, on the bright side we do hope you are looking forward to Martin Roscoe’s free livestreamed concert on 23^rd May at 6pm, in association with our friends at Ulverston Music Festival! Click on the link here https://ulverstonmusicfestival.co.uk/event/2021-online-recital-15-martin-roscoe/ to join in. It will only be available on that date and time – there will be no recording – so it’s as near as possible to an actual live performance.

Unfortunately this will be the only event we are able to hold in 2021, so please do tune in and enjoy meeting with us for this one occasion – and if you feel able to, please consider donating on our website – here – to support this concert and to help secure our return in 2022 – when we look forward to welcoming you back in person.