I notice a growing number of musically trained people, including our young musicians, who are very serious about finding ways to share their talent and skills with disadvantaged sectors of the population for whom participation is not so easy – and they recognise the mutual benefits of doing this. I want to do all I can to encourage and support this exchange of music and the joy that sharing it can bring to everybody concerned.

Ilaria Borletti Buitoni

We have witnessed first-hand through our BBT Community Grants the positive impacts that come from sharing the joy and transformative qualities of music with people who are vulnerable for many reasons, including low income, disability, poor health, trauma, displacement and isolation. And time and again, we have also heard how the practitioners who make these connections are themselves deeply impacted and enriched by their experiences.

Inspired by parallel conversations with some of the artists that we have previously supported with BBT Awards and Fellowships, in 2025 we are offering new BBT Artist Encore Awards of £15,000 to each of three alumni to devise and deliver personal classical music pilot projects that tackle societal issues or inequalities in the communities where they live and work.

We hope these inaugural Encore Awards will inspire more of our BBT alumni to develop projects of their own over the next years, to attract like-minded partners interested in extending BBT funding, and to generate exemplar projects that we can share with the classical music world at large.