Charity profile: Help Musicians
Help Musicians is an independent UK charity for professional musicians of all genres, supporting and empowering musicians through all stages of their lives, from training and beginning a career, through to retirement.
Supporting Help Musicians through Project 48 is really important to me: so many friends and colleagues have had their entire livelihoods wiped out during the last year, with music venues closed and travel and performance forbidden: Help Musicians has been a lifeline to them and many like them.
The financial impact of the pandemic has been severe and widespread. In 2020, Help Musicians provided over 19,000 musicians with Financial Hardship Funding, also offering advice, mental health help and isolation support to many more.
For those musicians still able to work, the charity rolled out its largest-ever creative funding programme, alongside opportunities to improve business skills and broaden career options within the music industry: with over a third of musicians reported to be considering changing career completely, these opportunities are critical to retaining the expertise and skill for which the UK music scene is known.
But the work Help Musicians carry out was vital even before the pandemic, and these other branches of their work are ongoing. The charity is ‘passionate about creating a world where musicians thrive.’ They do help at times of crisis – for example if someone has an injury which means they’re unable to work – but they also help create or realise opportunities, with a range of creative development funding, supporting professional growth, creative ideas, research projects, instrument costs, or (fearsomely expensive) postgraduate studies. The charity has had a dedicated talent development programme since the early 1980s and currently invests more than £600,000 a year in helping emerging artists; musicians helped include leading lights of the classical profession such as Dame Evelyn Glennie and Tasmin Little OBE. They also run an incredibly popular hearing health scheme which aims to prevent hearing problems that would otherwise bring musicians’ careers to an untimely end.
In 2017, Help Musicians launched a free mental health service for everyone working in the UK music industry – Music Minds Matter – in which BACP accredited counsellors with understanding of the music profession are available on the phone 24 hours a day to offer practical advice and emotional support on topics ranging from debt or employment law to performance anxiety and career concerns.
Help Musicians prides itself on kindness and compassion, and was born out of tragedy. In 1921 the English tenor Gervase Elwes was killed in railway accident in Boston, USA, whilst on tour. Throughout his life, he had shown compassion and kindness to musicians and composers, counting Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar as his friends, so following his death, his friends set up a fund for musicians in his name. In 1930, this became the Musicians Benevolent Fund, renamed in 2014 as Help Musicians. During the Second World War, pianist Myra Hess donated the proceeds of her famous concert series, which ran throughout the War at the National Gallery, enabling the work of the charity to continue and grow. For 100 years, Help Musicians has been providing help, support and opportunities to empower musicians at all stages of their lives.
