The Proms charities collection throughout COVID in 2020
Howard Lake | 5 September 2020 | News
The traditional charity collection from BBC Proms audiences at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and from international audiences online, has faced a considerable challenge this year, like all charities.
As of 21:00 today, 5 September, the total stands at £2,880, of which £2,065 has been pledged to Help Musicians UK, and £815 to CLIC Sargent.
The first sign that some kind of appeal would still be possible came when, on 28 May 2020, the BBC announced that the 2020 season of the Sir Henry Wood Proms would still go ahead this summer, albeit in an alternative format. At that point the Promenaders’ Musical Charities could only state that they were “in the process of determining what we can do to continue to support musical charities throughout the 2020 Proms season and will announce further details on this in due course”.
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Once the online giving pages had been set up, recognising that in-person attendance at the Proms was not going to happen, the first total was announced on 9 August. By 16.30 that day the total stood at £2,350, of which £1,620 had been pledged to Help Musicians UK, and £730 to CLIC Sargent.
Live Proms
By 28 August it was possible to host two weeks of “live Proms”. The first night performance came from the Proms’ usual venue of the Royal Albert Hall, but further performances would involve “a wider geographic spread than usual”.
At that point there was still no live audience permitted in any venue, so there was no change for the collecting buckets to be brandished.
The online collection stood at £2,710 (£1,955 for Help Musicians and £755 for CLIC Sargent). In contrast, at that date last year the total stood at almost £80,000.
David Underdown of the Promenaders’ Music Charities said:
“It’s obviously a difficult time for everyone, but the arts have been particularly badly hit, with any musicians’ freelance earnings almost entirely disappearing. For children already struggling with the impact of finding they have cancer or leukaemia the added stresses of being in hospital during a pandemic make the music therapy service offered by CLIC Sargent more important than ever too”.
He thanked all those who had donated so far.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.