Friday 17 July is the start of the 2020 season of the Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, in association with the BBC, although in a rather different form to normal years. With social distancing restrictions in place, and the expectation that there will be no audience in the hall even for the live elements of the season, we are organising an online-only collection this year. The trustees have decided to concentrate on our two core charities, Help Musicians (Registered charity No. 228089), and CLIC Sargent (Registered charity No. 1107328).

We have created pages on JustGiving to allow you to make online donations to these charities via Promenaders’ Musical Charities, follow this link for Help Musicians and this link for CLIC Sargent. If you would rather send a cheque (or CAF cheque), see the details on our 2020 season page.

With Help Musicians we will be supporting their COVID-19 Hardship Fund. Musicians get most of their work on a freelance basis, which has almost entirely dried up. Many have found that they do not qualify for the government support schemes, so have had to apply for Universal Credit or other benefits which may still leave them in considerable financial difficulties.

With CLIC Sargent we will continue to fund their music therapy work with children and young people with cancer (and their families). Life with cancer is hard enough in normal times, but of course there are inevitably many more worries at the moment, and this is vital support to help those receiving treatment for cancer. Unfortunately this work had to be suspended in the early part of the pandemic, but these donations will help remobilise the service, potentially moving to an online service, depending on what restrictions remain in place within hospitals.

We will continue to provide regular updates on the progress of our collection on this site, and via our Twitter account and Facebook page.