The Alderley Edge Music Speech & Drama Festival is yet again upon us. Commencing this year on Tuesday 6th May and culminating with the wonderful, spectacular Finalé on Saturday 10th May.
This year we have been fortunate to schedule all the classes in Alderley Edge venues, starting on the Tuesday with 11 Year 6 and under choirs to be held in St Philips and St James Church. With up to 40 young voices in each choir, this class alone has 440 children. This is not only a great testament to the high level of appeal that our Festival continues to have, but also to the commitment of the teaching staff, and the obvious high level of competition that this class continues to generate.
We have attracted one of our biggest entries ever – 2508 - just a handful of entrants down on our biggest ever year which was last year. What we are seeing is most important to the Festival and to its continuing appeal as one of the prestigious Festival's in the British and International Federation of Festivals Calendar, and that is that there a lot more different schools entering, some from outside the area, along with all our local schools having bumper entries. We thank all the schools entering this year for their continuing support.
We believe that the Alderley Edge Festival achieves its success because of the dedication of the volunteers who are responsible for its organisation and because of our generous sponsors and donors. We totally understand that we are currently experiencing a downturn in the economy - as we are all aware - our funding comes mainly from entry fees and what we can raise ourselves, but this alone does not cover the full cost of the Festival.
Without the sponsorship of our generous donors, the Festival in its present form would cease to exist. We would of course welcome sponsorship from any local organisation that values the ethos and vision of the Festival which is 'to encourage and provide a conduit through public performances for young children to express themselves through music, speech and drama and to showcase and nurture this talent in the performing arts'.
This is our 98th Festival, and we are continually thinking about our 100th in 2016, with some special events planned in that year. To get there involves an amazing amount of organisation and it is the commitment of the 24 members of the committee that make this happen.
Each member of the committee has a specific role, and it is this dedication to those roles that enables the Festival to run as smoothly as it does – but we do have fun on the way – a competitive Festival we have, but we enthuse it with a sense of fun; it this fun that is transferred to the five days and makes us what we are.
Following on from Tuesday, we will be utilising four venues throughout the week – the Festival Hall in Talbot Road, St Pius X Catholic Church in Stamford Road, the Alderley Edge Methodist Church in Chapel Road and St Philips & St James Church in Church Lane. On Saturday we also include six rooms in Alderley Edge School for Girls on London Road. We thank all the people from these organisations that help us in ensuring these venues are ready and in wonderful condition throughout the five days of the Festival.
However, a Festival does not run itself, and without our 'other' team of volunteers it would not be possible to be as efficient as we are. These are the volunteers, who every year help as ticket stewards, room stewards, platform stewards and adjudicator stewards. Without these people we would struggle, and I appeal to any local person who would like to help us, to ring our stewards co-ordinator Caroline Morgan on 01477 571264 – we always need help on Saturday morning and afternoon.
Finally, as part of our commitment to giving something back to the community, we are sponsoring a workshop for speech and drama students at the beginning of September this year. This will be held at Alderley Edge School for Girls, where we will be inviting speech and drama students from the Festival to be coached by Marcia Carr – a top speech and drama coach and adjudicator from The British & International Federation of Festivals.
The morning session will be one-to-one coaching for students in NC years 5 - 8, with the afternoon session being for students in NC years 9 – 13, and a short final performance by the students to their parents and committee as the final session. Our thanks go to Annabel Anderson and Jane Deans for this commitment, and to one of our well known benefactors Mrs Carole Nash OBE for her continuing financial contribution to this Festival.
Member post by Keith Lowe, Chairman of Alderley Edge Festival.
For further information visit www.alderleyedgefestival.com.
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