Sigh... it starts to feel like this is an ongoing thing. But I have to keep in mind that this is the first full year of doing this grant thing, and finding funding and all of that. I just want to program and play music... but to do that, it helps to have money to do all of that. So, that means fundraising, crowdfunding, and grant writing... there are ticket sales, but that sort of thing is post event, and you need some sort of pre-event funding sources if you don't want to feel like every concert is a hair trigger away from disaster!

So, the things that I'm working on this month....

First up, getting a larger grant application done to the local arts funding body to put on a larger scale "training" concert that would involve more students and some guest experts over a few days. This is in contrast to our core chamber music offering, where we have 3-5 players at most... and we invite a single student to play a little bit with us. The rehearsal period is a single day, and then we are straight in. No problem with the right mix of professionals, but a bit of a trial by fire for the student! Still... the ones that have done it have really enjoyed it!

Anyway this larger scale project would be a sort of intermediate project between education and professional work... a sort of bridging training sort of thing. I'm not sure if the funding body will take a shine to it... but it is one of the projects that we had to abandon after our year long funding application wasn't successful.

And then we are also looking at applying for a regional touring program... that would be in the 2025 year... sigh, such long term planning. But this is only currently an expression of interest, with a rough outline of programming and all of that. My wife will take the lead on this... as I'm likely to be heads down in the grant application, and they are due roughly at the same time. We do have a couple of possible programs for this, but it does mean that we need collate it together and then check for interest and availability of other players (and a dancer!)...

Then there is an incoming education project, where I will need to do some arrangements to suit a pretty weird combination of instruments!

Then there is additional publicity and other stuff that needs to be done for our core chamber music offerings. Posters, advertising, graphic design, ticketing... all of that needs to be done within the month... sigh... lots of things that need to be done, and the time feels like it drips away.

... but in the end, it does feel good to be working on your own passion project and watching it grow. Still, I do think that I need to be much more on top of planning... I'm organised, but it helps to have a much longer view out to a couple of years. But then again, we didn't exist one year ago!

I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x

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