‘Doing a tour creates excitement among the students and attendance went up from 23 to 60 within a few weeks!’

One of my aims for this year was to grow my orchestra. Getting students into our orchestra has always been a bit of challenge, particularly getting enough variety of instruments in an all-girls school. Doing a tour creates excitement amongst the students and attendance went up from 23 to 60 within a few weeks. We only managed to take 47 of these students on tour. But the end result is that even now three months post tour, we still have a strong orchestra of over 65 students, and the orchestra is going from strength to strength. We’re now building the orchestra’s confidence to perform harder pieces.

We had some difficulties organising around the restrictions, as the restrictions in the UK were being updated every 2-3 months; we just had to be flexible with masks and vaccinations. But everyone was so understanding, and the students were a credit to our school with mask wearing all the time when necessary. We added a layer of COVID restrictions to our information evening, but it really didn’t hinder us as much as I expected it to. 

Managing to take an orchestra of 47 musicians on tour was for me a personal highlight. We particularly enjoyed performing in St Giles Cathedral. A lot of students raved about it afterwards. It had such amazing acoustics for our orchestra, it made us sound amazing, and we gained a decent size audience from it which made it even more special.

The backdrop at the Ross Bandstand where we also performed was incredible and we have some amazing pictures from it. We battled the wind, but we had a laugh. The students are still talking about us 'playing in the wind', so it created fantastic memories.

Visiting the music museum was also a massive success. The students got particularly competitive on the treasure hunt tour and the Edinburgh Dungeon and Ghost Tour leaders were fantastic; they knew exactly how to 'scare' our students. 

I would highly recommend Edinburgh and Club Europe to other music leaders; everything was so easy and it honestly was an amazing experience. 

If other music leaders are thinking about touring, I would say just go for it. It often seems scarier when you are planning it, but when you are there, it really is such a great thing to give to the students. 

I always put feelers out with the students prior to launching a tour to make sure we get enough students in the group to keep costs down and to get some excitement going. I talk to the students about what excursions they would like to do, giving them some control over what they are doing on tour; this has always been successful. 

We’re hoping to go on tour again in a year’s time. Our Chamber Choir and Senior Choir are also looking to go on tour with Club Europe to Lake Garda next summer. They’re very excited about it! 

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