Mayor of Worcester Blog

The Mayor gets invited to all sorts of things. I get to go to so many interesting events and meet such fascinating people. Too many to list and I don’t want to give just a rundown of everything in my diary, so here’s just a couple of things from my week.

I recently attended a new member’s Rotary Lunch. The Rotary club was founded in Chicago USA in 1905 by Paul Harris. Rotary International is a worldwide organisation of business and professional people. Rotary’s motto is ‘Service Above Self’. Its lofty mission is to provide service in the community, in the workplace, and throughout the world to build goodwill and peace, provide humanitarian service, and to encourage high ethical standards in all vocations. They are famous for their work in raising money for the goal of eradicating polio. Here in Worcester, they raise money for various charities but the thing that caught my eye was not the money raised but something perhaps even more valuable, the time they give to their youth work.

Members of the Rotary Club of Worcester have for many years been patiently going into schools to spend time just listening to children read. This is a big deal, not every child has a parent that will spend time listening to their child reading. This is levelling up in action. Great work, but the Rotary Club have taken this much, much further by creating opportunities for primary school children to take that scary step of speaking in public with their Junior Youth Speaks competition.

Year Six children are asked to either read a poem or write and then deliver a short speech. This week I had the pleasure of being part of the judging panel at Hollymount School. I’m in awe of these eleven-year-old children speaking so confidently with a microphone in front of the whole school. As a shy child I can’t imagine doing that. What an opportunity to grow confidence – public speaking is an amazing life skill. Thank you Emma Train, Head of English at Hollymount School, and thank you to Sheila Sonley, Rotary Club Youth Lead, for all the fantastic work you do.

 

 

Being Mayor of Worcester has given me fantastic opportunities to go to many events that I wouldn’t normally attend – such as a Saturday morning rehearsal of WODYS Carousel with 54 children and a production team.

WODYS – Worcester Operatic and Dramatic Society Youth Section – is putting on the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical at Worcester’s Swan Theatre from Tuesday 1 August  to Saturday 5 August  – and after watching the rehearsal I am really looking forward to going to the show.

The youngsters, aged 8 to 18, performed with such confidence and I really enjoyed listening to songs such as If I Loved You and June is Bustin’ Out All Over, sung so well by the soloists and chorus.

It takes something special to get up on every Saturday morning and put so much into a rehearsal like that. I was very impressed.

The arts are something special and it is very important to support live theatre and music. I hope the performances will be well attended and a good amount of money raised at the raffles for Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust.

WODYS has won five Best Youth Production awards from NODA (National Operatic and Dramatic Association) for shows including Les Miserables (School Edition) and Shrek, the musical the group did last year, and the youngsters are hoping Carousel might be nominated for another similar accolade.

Carousel is one of the great musicals and tells the story of the love affair between Billy Bigelow, a smooth-talking carousel barker, and Julie Jordan, a young mill worker.

I was strongly impressed by the acting and how the youngsters work so well together and everyone is so friendly and keen.

I am really looking forward to seeing Carousel. But here is the sting. The arts are suffering. Attendance numbers for many concerts and shows are down due to the cost of living crisis. But also there are many, often older, people who have just lost the habit of going out to events such as these. I’d hate for them to play to an empty theatre – will you support these young people by going to their show?

Tickets can be bought at Huntingdon Hall box office, Crowngate, Worcester, telephone: 01905611427 or visit www.worcestertheatres.co.uk

 

 

 

What would we do without volunteers?

I recently attended the Volunteer Expo at the Guildhall. It was a delight, as Mayor of Worcester, to speak to and thank some of the stall holders.

I must confess I’ve been on something of a journey with my thinking about charities and volunteering. I used to think, why are we papering over the cracks in support services that have perhaps in the past been provided by the government? Maybe I’m mellowing as I get older, but I’ve come to realise, especially after talking to people like Sally Ellison of Worcester Community Action, that those who give time and money actually receive something very valuable too.

Don’t get me wrong, you have to be in a fairly good financial, emotional and physical position to have the luxury of doing something for others. But if you are in that fortunate position, donating time or money is so rewarding – perhaps it’s just that feeling of empowerment and making a personal difference to something you care about.

So I was very pleased to join more than 300 people at the Volunteer Expo and to see all the many organisations that contribute so much to Worcester – from the South Worcestershire Archaeological Group to Victim Support, and from National Trust to Age UK. The Expo has been running, in various forms, for more than 25 years and it was good to see that attendance numbers were up again after the understandable dip caused by the pandemic.

Age UK Worcester and Malvern Hills is the subject of my Mayor’s charity appeal and I’m pleased to say that you can now make a donation to it at www.worcester.gov.uk/mayor.

On the same day as the Volunteer Expo it was sadly also the funeral of Cllr Simon Cronin. He will be greatly missed by everyone who know him. As one councillor said in an obituary, “it must have taken him ages to walk from one end of the High Street to the other such were the many people who would stop him for a chat.”

The Elgar Festival is for Everyone

Last weekend it was the Elgar Festival. It is a celebration of Worcester’s most famous musical son, Edward Elgar. Held annually during the weekend closest to Elgar’s birthday (2 June 1857), the festival combines symphonic and string orchestra concerts by the festival’s orchestra-in-residence, the English Symphony Orchestra, with chamber concerts, choral concerts, recitals, outdoor concerts, plays, exhibits and talks.

What a terrific week of music. It was an incredible event, the organisers must be commended for making so many of the events either free or affordable. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to two performances in which the Mayoress sang. During the Gala Concert we were treated to Elgar’s ‘The Music Makers’ and Elgar’s symphony no.1. The conductor was the internationally acclaimed artistic director Kenneth Woods.

Whilst introducing the various pieces of music Ken made remarks, to the packed Cathedral, about the parlous state of funding that the arts receive in this country. His pointed words alluded both to the funding cuts to the Arts Council England and the BBC following its recent announcements of cuts to its orchestras and the potential demise of the BBC Singers, the only full-time professional choir in the country.

This sort of got me thinking – why are these cuts happening and why is classical music seen by many as being posh and elitist? Could this be something to do with, what we know we value, and what we don’t know is not valued and so not funded?

I’m afraid so, successive governments have consistently cut music education budgets which, together with an under-valuing of the subject and greater emphasis being placed on STEM subjects, leads to fewer students studying music at GCSE and A level, and the knock-on effect of fewer pupils taking up instruments.

Many music teachers are leaving the profession, music teaching is being carried out in many schools by peripatetic staff that only some schools and parents can afford. This is now all compounded by the cost of living crisis, escalating energy costs in schools forcing head teachers into having to make very difficult decisions about what to cut. I’m afraid it’s a bit of a depressing picture of decline.