The fragile present

NYCNI’s recent funding struggles highlight wider risks in the choral ecosystem

Last month, Jonathan Lucas Wood and I coordinated a campaign to protect Surrey Youth Choir. It garnered significant local media attention and drew support from alumni, members of the public, and prominent figures from across the music world. The choir has now been protected from closure, albeit with a couple of changes, and I’ve already shared my thanks to those who advocated so strongly to safeguard this valuable part of the South East’s choral landscape; to anyone I haven’t shared that with yet, thank you once more.

But the experience of the campaign brought a few wider truths into sharper focus.

1. Everyone wants to keep the nice thing.

That might seem obvious. Of course people want the nice thing. (And in truth, sometimes it’s not the case, but I’m working on the assumption here that all parties are good actors.)

But that support is often reactive, sparked only when a threat becomes visible. In SYC’s case, we had to be crystal clear about why the choir matters – not just emotionally, but musically, socially, and culturally. We also needed to ask bigger questions about strategy. What role do county-level ensembles play in the musical life of young people? What is the plan for ensuring their survival, especially when so much school music has already been hollowed out? Insisting that we think about those actions is crucial in articulating the message that this is a cultural treasure worth protecting.

2. Artistic and administrative minds don’t always align.

Again, no surprise – but worth stating plainly. As a practitioner, I’ve often gone straight into blue-sky mode, full of enthusiasm for what could be possible. But through experience on both sides of the table – from running a semi-professional project choir in Edinburgh to my current role at Pimlico Musical Foundation – I’ve come to understand just how much balance is needed. Vision without infrastructure is unsustainable. Projects need sound foundations if they’re going to run again, grow, or do more than just survive. That’s how you build legacy.

3. Communication breakdowns create the greatest risk.

This isn’t a dramatic or controversial claim. It’s just how things fall apart. When vision isn’t shared clearly, when people don’t know what’s coming or where the gaps are, and when no one is quite sure who’s meant to be steering, things unravel. In youth music, where the landscape shifts quickly and most work is under-resourced, the space for miscommunication is small. When things start to go wrong, young people (and practitioners) are often the first to suffer the consequences.

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Surrey Youth Choir was fortunate in that Surrey Arts was in a position to reverse its decision and protect its operations. The National Youth Choir of Northern Ireland is presently not so fortunate, having just lost around £60,000 per year of funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and with its board of trustees announcing to its members its intention to close operations. A petition protesting the decision started by Keeley Magill, an enterprising member of their Training Choir, has at time of print garnered over 5,000 signatures in its first few days and is finding increasing attention in the Irish Times, Classic FM, BBC, Slipped Disc and more.

Before I continue, I emphasise my full and comprehensive support for this petition, and for the members and artistic staff of NYCNI. I think it’s utterly devastating to make this decision, which hobbles Northern Ireland’s youth choral ecosystem, making elite-level youth music making only more possible if you happen to live closer to one of the major cities (or more realistically, Belfast). It is equally necessary to acknowledge ACNI’s current funding challenges, which impact all manner of cultural activities in the country. That said, I think the home nations must all be able to offer a competitive leading national choral programme. NYCNI’s decision to close after nearly 30 years of successful work - particularly during their summer courses where young people and staff are understandably shell-shocked by this news - is nothing short of heartbreaking. I sincerely hope the board’s decision can be reversed.

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The shocked reaction of members and community supporters illustrates that the impact of losing this core funding was not fully understood by individuals outside of NYCNI’s core management and board. A short look at the most recent accounts of the organisation for the year ending 31 March 2024 illustrates a different and far bleaker picture: significant overspend in the past financial year severely diminished the choir’s financial reserves. In particular, their finances were impacted by the appointment of a part-time CEO, the arts consultant and producer, Alice Kennelly, funded through reserves (Ms Kennelly’s Twitter bio mentions she is now “ex-NYCNI.”). This comes alongside additional expenditure on salary costs, and legal and professional fees owing to “a significant employee issue”, leaving the charity with a little over £16,000 in its reserves in 2024 compared to over £70,000 in 2023. Additional filings at Companies House indicate a significant number of recent changes in the board of trustees, with several leaving relatively soon after being appointed.

In 2024, the funds donated from ACNI comprised £70,733 out of a total donation pool of £79,293, meaning only £8,560 was raised through other activities: Gift Aid on member subscriptions, individual donations, general trust income and a gift from PWC for processing payroll. Curiously, the membership subs from choristers rose from the 2023 to 2024 financial year by just over £20,000 - a sign of the popularity of the choir and its activities, no doubt, but also a humbling reminder that were this not the case, the charity would be firmly in the red even sooner. While the NYCNI website lists four funding bodies it has worked with separately, this funding appears extremely limited (and indeed, sits around £5,000 lower than the previous financial year).

The picture is therefore of an operation that runs on a shoestring. Not to say that other arts organisations don’t also feel the pinch of financial pressures, but to illustrate just how critical ACNI funding was and is to NYCNI’s operations.

This is the dictionary definition of putting your eggs in one basket.

Even in a scenario where all boxes are ticked and all priorities met, there are countless instances with other arts funding bodies in the UK where funding has been politicised to focus on certain core areas, or where emphasis has been placed on providing new opportunities to different groups rather than maintaining the status quo. Just ask English National Opera, still reeling from major funding decisions that are forcing the group to relocate from London. Just ask groups impacted by Creative Scotland’s changes to its funding programme over the past two years.

This raises the question: at what point did NYCNI identify the risks to its financial security? At what point did it undertake greater efforts to diversify its income through other backers and its Friends scheme? What advice did its board of directors take from ACNI to advise its application? This last point is something that many laypeople perhaps don’t understand: at this level, these decisions rarely come completely by surprise. In my role with Pimlico Musical Foundation, I’ve been part of discussions with our team and external prospective funders who provide extensive discussion and feedback on prospective applications, especially when considering multi-year core activity funding. We’ve had times we’ve taken the guidance offered and been successful; times we’ve been unsuccessful; and other times when as a team, we’ve agreed that the feedback isn’t in alignment with our own goals and objectives, meaning that we are not the best fit for that specific funding.

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, in response to initial comments on the announcement of the closure, said:

‘The decision not to fund the NYCNI this year was unrelated to [ACNI] funding pressures and based on the ability of the organisation to meet the programme’s criteria. Our staff members have provided the company with detailed feedback on their application, and have met with them to discuss their immediate plans and future funding opportunities. Provision of high-quality youth choral training and development in Northern Ireland remains a priority for the Arts Council and we recognise the important role NYCNI has played in the same.’

Losing the core funding does not preclude NYCNI from applying to other grants or other opportunities through ACNI. For its part, ACNI also offers public advice on its decision-making process for funding, as well as confirming that it operates an appeals process. However, NYCNI’s overreliance on ACNI for core funding, coupled with additional infrastructural challenges, certainly risks making it far less appealing to funding bodies.

It certainly feels as though this will be a difficult mountain for NYCNI to climb, and the relative silence from its board of trustees when both the artistic team of the choir and ACNI have spoken publicly is perhaps telling of some significant challenges still yet to come. No statement has yet been released on the choir’s website or social media. Shortly before I published this article, Katie Andrews’ moving report for UTV News (shared on ITV) was released, and the NYCNI board released a statement in response:

‘We are disappointed with our funding application, without that funding we had no choice but to commence the process to close down the operations of the company after the summer courses…
We disagreed with the reasons given by the Arts Council for rejecting the application but those reasons are confidential.’

If anything, this lack of transparency raises more questions about where the breakdown occurred in this process. The board of NYCNI may have specific reasons for keeping the reasons for not receiving funding confidential; it remains unclear whether any of the reasons listed above were factors. The Arts Council of Northern Ireland does not publicly provide feedback on applications without the explicit permission of the organisation in question. Ultimately, this is good practice which allows organisations the freedom to revise and apply to them or other funders in the future without prejudice. However, without knowing the full behind-the-scenes decision-making and without NYCNI’s willingness to be open about the perceived shortfalls in its application, it’s unlikely we’ll see what specifically impacted ACNI’s decision.

I’m usually one of the first to say that arts funding bodies should aim to fund more and fund better. However, with all of this in mind, I’m led to believe that there are more complex circumstances at hand. The narrative being shared by many that this decision is the sole responsibility of ACNI does not sit well with me; I sense it is a misleading spin on a difficult situation. In the meantime, Andrew Nunn and the musical team at NYCNI should remain in our thoughts for the hard work they’ve undertaken with the choirs nationwide, and for prioritising the care and education of their young people still currently in residential courses, processing the reality that this organisation may be wrapping up within a week. By no means should my thoughts be taken as a criticism of their work with thousands of young people annually who stand to lose the most from this closure.

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Let’s come back to our earlier points.

1. Everyone wants to keep the nice thing.
2. Artistic and administrative minds don’t always align.
3. Communication breakdowns create the greatest risk.

What both the Surrey and NYCNI cases make clear is that these three observations aren’t abstract principles. They’re the difference between survival and closure.

The end of the UTV report shares that the young people of NYCNI hope “someone will step in before the final curtain falls.” Perhaps there will be some golden backer prepared to fund activities in the coming year; perhaps a skeletal programme could be formed, enabling the choir to operate another few seasons as the organisation attempts to rebuild. However, unless support exists before the crisis point, it can only ever be reactive. Where artistic and administrative priorities fall out of step, as seems likely in NYCNI’s case, there are infrastructural risks that undermine even the most brilliant musical and educational work. Perhaps most of all, where communication is unclear or inconsistent, confusion grows, trust erodes, and opportunities to course-correct are missed. These aren’t new ideas, and they’re not hard to grasp, but in moments like these, they’re painfully easy to forget. For the sake of the young people of NYCNI, we must remember.

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If you would like to support the petition to protect NYCNI, you can sign it here.