Charity of the Year: Orchestras for All

MRT has chosen Orchestras for All as its Charity of the Year. The charity exists to make orchestral music open to any young person who wants to play an instrument, whatever their circumstances, and given how many of us at MRT grew up with music as a formative part of our own lives, its aims struck a chord across the office.

OFA began 15 years ago, when its founder, Marianna Hay, was teaching in a state school in north London and saw how little opportunity many of her students had to make music together. She started getting instruments into the school and pupils playing as an ensemble, and that early initiative grew into the National Orchestra for All (NOFA), which now runs residentials, regional workshops and online sessions for 11- to 16-year-olds across an 18-month season, open to anyone regardless of ability or means. Three further programmes have since taken shape alongside it: Modulo, which sets up music-making in schools and community settings; Music Leadership Training; and Youth Leadership.

Behind the programmes are some striking figures – last season, Modulo reached 597 young musicians across 38 schools, and more than a third of NOFA’s current members are neurodivergent – but it’s the individual accounts that really convey what the charity does. One NOFA member described joining during a lonely and difficult period, and how the orchestra gave them the confidence to return to education. A parent spoke of their child finding, for the first time, “a space that is inclusive,” somewhere being different simply wasn’t an issue. A teacher on the Modulo programme recalled a pupil who, months later, still talked about the “magic in the air” felt in the silence at the end of a piece.

MRT has set the office a staff target of raising a minimum of £1,000, which the company will match – and will match again, whatever we raise beyond that. We will invite clients who wish to join in too.

Within days of announcing to the company, several colleagues had volunteered to run a Charity Committee to steer the fundraising. Meanwhile we are looking forward to an autumn visit from OFA alumni who will visit the office, giving us the chance to meet some of the young musicians whose experience we’ve been reading about.

To find out more, please visit orchestrasforall.org