Community Outreach
Sharing our love of opera.
With our community outreach, we aim to share our love of opera with as wide and diverse an audience as possible, making our high-quality performances appealing and accessible, and offering free tickets to under 18s and students. Our activities are designed to engage children, young people, and adults in varied, dynamic, and interactive workshops and opera performance opportunities.
Below, we share more about our new outreach programme for 2022 and beyond, including opera workshops at primary schools and an inclusive all-age community project based on Cavalli's ‘Musiche Sacre’.
Through this programme, we demonstrate our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion by developing relevant and appropriate strategies for sharing and facilitating access to our work, as well as building meaningful connections between our performers and community organisations by offering free of charge open workshops and relaxed performance opportunities. Our program is also designed to enhance cultural engagement and foster inter-age community partnerships and collaborations by developing multi-art form opera projects which include elements such as movement, dance, and physical theatre, puppetry, and instrument playing.
Opera workshops for schools.
During the performance run of Rameau's Les Indes Galantes at The Cockpit in February 2022, our Artistic Director, Marcio da Silva, and Company Member and Production Manager, Helen May, launched the first phase of our new programme by running opera workshops in two primary schools in Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea.
Marcio and Helen have built a strong partnership with Awards for Young Musicians (which works under the auspices of the Youth Music Network supporting children from low-income families, helping them to overcome financial and social barriers and enabling them to fulfil their musical potential).
Inclusive community projects.
2023 will see a series of new projects run by Marcio and Helen using EO Company soloists and Ensemble OrQuesta Baroque. In January and February EO will lead an inclusive all-age community project based on Cavalli's Musiche Sacre - 'Music from a time of Plague'.
This project will include interactive singing workshops and performance opportunities for both children and adult participants, alongside 8 young professional singers and a small ensemble of 7 specialist early musicians.
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We need your support.
To continue to grow our Community activities as well as our productions and Academy, we need your support. From small donations to grants and foundations, every little bit helps us continue to deliver our charitable goals.