The Transitions scheme has been created in line with government policy for higher education, to attract and retain the widest range of students to the creative and cultural industries.

During June 2013 RCS will begin auditioning in various Scottish venues to find and support performing arts talent for the future of the nation.

RCS are seeking potential music, drama and dance talent to begin work in August 2013 and in 2014 RCS will add production and screen talent to their search.

Transitions 20/40 offers tuition fee and travel support to take part in Royal Conservatoire workshops, classes and short courses in preparation for audition or interview for further vocational training at a higher education level.

If you would like to know more then please contact RCS and they will add you to their mailing list. In May there will be further details, FAQs and application guidance.

Transitions 20/40 is supported by the Scottish Funding Council.

For more details, please see the Transitions 20/40 Guidelines .

If you would like further information please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Tel: +44 (0)141 270 8319

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For the second year running the Musicians Benevolent Fund has teamed up with AYM to offer financial support for struggling artists aged between 14-18.

This partnership celebrates youth music within the UK and, this year, has assisted a further 11 talented young musicians with financial difficulties. Individual grants of £500-£2000 have been awarded to musicians across a variety of instruments ranging from bagpipes to bassoon.

These grants help with some of the financial challenges that musicians in training face, such as specialist course fees or purchasing an instrument. The Musicians Benevolent Fund are proud to be in partnership with AYM to aid a new round of talented young musicians and invest in their future.

We could not deliver the work of the charity without the generous and extensive volunteer support from so many committed people. It’s not always easy to fit their support for AYM alongside their professional and personal responsibilities and into their very busy schedules; yet they manage to give us valuable parcels of their time, expertise and know-how to offer young musicians experiences and opportunities that are often impossible to access otherwise. We asked one of our volunteers, Stephanie Kulesza about why she got involved with AYM:

“Since I heard Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf when I was five years old, music has been a huge part of my life. I attended the wonderful Robert Mayer concerts for children followed by flute, piano and choir at school and finally I studied singing for four years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama including two years on the Opera Course. After several years singing professionally and bringing up three children I decided to go into the administrative side of music, working for the London Symphony Orchestra, Harold Holt Music Management, and Decca Records.

In 1999 I joined BBC Radio 3 where I worked on the Lunchtime Concerts, Opera and the Proms Season – doing research for the Presenters, arranging recording sessions, booking artists and liaising with agents and concert venues.

After meeting Chair Philip Jones at a concert last year I became very interested in the work of AYM. I was so impressed by the young AYM Award winners who performed at the House of Commons, that I offered to become a volunteer. I have been so lucky with my own music education that this makes me really keen to further the work of AYM in helping talented young musicians to have as wide an experience as possible of the wonderful world of music.”

Stephanie has created numerous concert-going and behind-the-scenes rehearsal opportunities with orchestras for our Award winners. We are always on the look-out for talented individuals to come to us with ideas and contributions. Most of all, we extend our appreciation to our entire network of over 50 volunteers.

To get involved, do please get in touch.

Email Hester Cockcroft, AYM’s director at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Our annual Awards programme is at the centre of all our initiatives and fuels our drive to support musically talented young people who are struggling with their musical costs. We encourage applications from all genres of music-making and positively want to hear from young musicians from all parts of the UK. We’ve increased the pot of money to up to £100,000 for 2013 and we expect to receive applications from young instrumentalists aged 5 to 17 years of age, with the potential to become the fantastic musicians of the future.

We focus on helping those with both exceptional potential and financial need; we offer Awards of up to £2,000 to help towards the costs of music education, including the purchase of instruments, lessons and other forms of support, such as travel.

Thanks to the generous investments made by our funders, donors and partners we’re able to offer funding support with specific themes through our Named Awards:

• The Best Viola Player of the Year
• The Edith Hemingway Memorial Award (best young musician from the North West of England)
• The Helen Sibthorpe Award
• The Joan Scrutton Award (for String players)
• The Milapfest-AYM Fellowship Awards for Indian Music (for young musicians playing Indian Music in the UK)
• The Mitton Daniels Award for Cello
• The Musicians Benevolent Fund Scholarships (young people aged 14 to 18)
• The Young Welsh Musicians Award

To find out more about eligibility for next year please click here to visit Our Programmes /Awards page

Follow us on Twitter @AwardsAYM hashtag #AwardsAYM

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve recently attracted three leading musicians to join us to further our reach and develop fresh opportunities to support our Award winners’ creative musical journeys. Paul Lewis, Shabaka Hutchings and Duncan Ward are joining our rostrum of award-winning and renowned patrons and we are looking forward to working with them on some exciting new opportunities in the coming months.

Also joining AYM are two new trustees, Lady Hilary Browne-Wilkinson, founder of the Institute for Philanthropy and Professor Derek Aviss, OBE, Visiting Professor and Former Executive Director of Trinity Laban and Former Principal of Trinity College of Music. We are delighted to welcome Hilary and Derek to the Board not only for their excellent contributions in developing our strategic work, but also to deepen and extend our support for young musicians.

Milapfest and Awards for Young Musicians have joined forces to offer six bursary awards to young musicians playing Indian Music in the UK.

The awards have been developed to support young musicians struggling with the associated costs of playing an instrument, such as lessons, buying an instrument, travel and specialist courses.

Applicants must be between the age of 10 and 18 and have exceptional talent and passion for music. The awards are also given on the basis of financial need and applicants will be means tested to ensure eligibility.

The awards can cover the cost of UK based training or instrument purchase, or subsidise the cost of advanced international training.

The Fellowships

x3 Training and Instrument Awards of £500, which will pay for UK based training and instrument purchase

x3 Travelling Fellowship Awards of £750, which fund a period of advanced training in India

APPLICATION PROCESS 

Applications are made directly to Awards for Young Musicians - please follow this link to the process and guidelines.

Closing date for 2013 applications was Friday 15 March.

Awards for Young Musicians (AYM) provides tailor-made funding, mentoring and other musical/performance opportunities; we support exceptionally talented young musicians from lower-income backgrounds living in the UK. We combine this with professional development for music leaders and advocacy/research initiatives.

For more information about the awards please contact:

Awards for Young Musicians

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Phone: 0117 9049906

Milapfest

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Phone: 0151 291 3949

In broadening our portfolio of partnerships, AYM has been working with Milapfest to support more young Indian musicians, resulting in a number of positive developments. In 2012 Milapfest led three Awards auditions at Birmingham Conservatoire. In another related development, Juliana, a gifted harpist that we’ve been supporting for a number of years, received a full bursary from Milapfest this summer to attend a three-day course called Discovering Indian Music.

Alok Nayak, Director of Development, Milapfest, said "Milapfest has always admired the work AYM is doing to support young musicians, and we are truly excited about this fantastic opportunity to join forces and create a new award. This will be a huge source of inspiration to young people and will increase their chances for progress in the future. We look forward to developing this excellent Milapfest-AYM relationship to ensure we support talented young people for years to come." 

Milapfest, the UK’s leading Indian Arts Development Trust, works to create and develop high-quality performance-programmes that showcase the rich diversity of Indian culture and performing arts. Complementing and enriching this is a sophisticated Education and Continuing Professional Development programme for artists and students of Indian Arts. This includes two national orchestras, Samyo & Tarang, the Arts School, and many Artist Development opportunities in both music and dance. Now in its 27th year, Milapfest is working both nationally and internationally to promote excellence in the sector, and to forge a new and innovative approach for future engagement with Indian culture. 

AYM Award winners Billy (folk fiddle) and Asha (saxophone) joined AYM Patron Shabaka Hutchings and an amazing group of leading players in the contemporary, traditional, blues and jazz worlds for a weekend of extraordinary music. This is the fourth year that the Tabernacle Folk festival has been staged at the renowned London venue of the same name. This year’s festival called from “Minimalism to Carnival!”  included equal billing for the young musicians.

“It’s a ridiculously strong line-up” commented one of the funders, Arts Council England, and featured Steve Beresford, Harry Brown, Pete Cooper, John Crawford, Theon Cross, Samuel Dubois, Yaz Fentazi, Dan Goodwin, Ramon Goose, Billy, Shabaka Hutchings, Shanti Paul Jayasinha, Darragh Morgan, Brian OhUiginn, Asha, Seb Rochford, Ramesh Shotham, Howard Skempton, Dan Stewart, Byron Wallen and Jason Yarde.

The event took place over a weekend from 6–7 April from 5–10pm and was described as their most ambitious festival yet, featuring eight new works and several exceptional collaborations. This year Tabernacle Folk also embraced Carnival, a sound so distinctive to Notting Hill, and part of the Folk tradition. To find out more about the festival programme, please visit their website www.tabernaclefolk.com.

We are delighted to announce that thanks to generous funding by the Elias Fawcett Trust, we have been able to launch a brand new orchestral chamber music programme, in collaboration with the English Chamber Orchestra (ECO). This is our first formal ensemble opportunity for AYM awardees. ECO musicians in their Close Encounters education and outreach team are coaching and rehearsing four distinctive chamber music ensembles; each will then perform in a Prelude recital on stage before one of the ECO’s own evening concerts. The first of these Preludes took place before the ECO’s concert of Handel’s Messiah on 2 December at Cadogan Hall.

This project gives the young musicians the opportunity to rehearse and perform in the same way as a professional chamber ensemble: combining concentrated rehearsal time, personal practice and a lot of fun in the process. Each of the four projects will feature a different instrumental combination. The first of the four groups, the string ensemble With Strings Attached, held the initial session at the end of September at the Royal College of Music. In the coming months three more groups will be created: Ensemble Classique in spring 2013, Celebrations of Diversity in summer 2013 and Le Swing in autumn 2013.

More about our collaboration with the ECO

Awards for Young Musician's patron, Miloš Karadaglić, was the winner of the MasterCard Breakthrough Artist Of The Year Award at this year's Classic BRITS, for Latino, his second album in as many years, recorded by Deutsche Grammophon.

After a detailed application and assessment process, we are delighted that in 2012 we were able to support 123 musicians. 2012 was a bumper year, with applicants looking for up to £500,000 of funding towards their music education, purchase of instruments, and other forms of support, such as travel. It’s demand that will continue to increase as opportunities for funding support become harder to locate. However, thanks to the generosity of our funders and donors, we provided these 123 successful musicians with a total of £70,000 in awards towards their costs.

We seek to help those with talent, potential and need: we found no shortage of choice, so some tough decisions had to be made by AYM’s independent panel of adjudicators, which includes expert professional musicians plus teachers from leading music schools and conservatoires.

The average income for those who were successful was £17,327 although, in terms of all applications, families applying had an average income of £27,686. This year we’ve seen a shift in the talent gender-pool, with boys taking 55% of the funds as opposed to the girls, who last year gained 56% of the total awards pot.

Our awardees are geographically spread across the UK with the majority of talented musicians being located in the North of England, West, Yorkshire & Humberside, the South East, London and the South West. Most applicants come from State schools and similarly that’s where the bulk of the support is provided.

Our expert panel of adjudicators worked very hard to ensure that those applicants with both identifiable talent and the most potential had the opportunity to demonstrate their skills in a series of auditions in London. The purpose of these auditions is to determine the highest level of award and support. The members of the panel looked at the whole picture, including personal circumstances, teaching and progression, as well as the narrative of the applicants’ musical development. On occasion they had to make difficult decisions about the nature of support they would recommend, in contrast to what the young musicians and their families might be looking for. Congratulations to the 123 young musicians who were successful this year; our final thoughts to all applicants: keep up the good work on your musical studies and practice.

Every year we arrange an inspirational day of creativity, music making and innovative workshops where we bring together as many of our young awardees as possible (and their families) to meet with their peers. On 11 November 2012 at the Sage Gateshead, Tyneside we held our AYM Annual Awards Day. The musicians experienced a memorable series of events where they were able to stretch themselves musically, take part in vocal training, where orchestral and non-orchestral musicians, had the chance to participate in a range of innovative morning workshops, strengthen their playing skills and build their confidence in different environments. These sessions were led by professional musicians and also featured the chance to learn a regional contemporary piece and work with its composer.

Our celebrated patron, Charles Hazlewood had planned to lead an afternoon of improvisation but, unfortunately, due to illness, he was unable to make it. In a highly imaginative workshop, led by last-minute professionals from The Sage, our musicians performed their newly created piece as part of the formal Awards ceremony, the final event of an exhilarating day.

A big Thank You to everyone who  donated to AYM through The Big Give during the period - 6th December to  8th December. The Challenge was a fantastic opportunity for donors to double their donations and for AYM to raise much-needed additional funds in support of young musicians. As a result, the £7,000 donated has been doubled to £14,000. And there's GiftAid on top of that.

Thanks to you, another 15 young people will get the chance to develop their gift over two years through our Furthering Talent programme.

However, you may still donate online as we continue to raise funds for our Furthering Talent appeal via The Big Give website.

Click here to donate via The Big Give.

To find out how you can get involved, please contact
Hester Cockcroft, Director - Awards for Young Musicians
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Phone: + 44 (0) 117 9049906

Last October, three AYM young musicians, cellist Sarah, saxophonist Jess and classical guitarist Haydn took part in a concert tour of the North Highlands counties of Caithness, Sutherland and Ross in Scotland. Sarah, from Cumbria won this year’s BBC Proms Inspire Young Composers’ Competition in the 17-18 category with her “Portrait of a Moor”. The win gave her a BBC Proms performance, a broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and a BBC commission. North Highland Connections, was established by The Prince of Wales’ 'North Highland Initiative' to promote an integrated, diverse cultural programme to enhance the quality of life and tourism; it presents a year-round programme of Arts events in venues through the North Highlands counties.

In September, AYM was invited to take part in the Transformation Trust’s annual gala evening hosted by chairman, Sir David Bell and chief executive, Amy Leonard. AYM musicians, Troy, a thirteen-year old violinist and Juliana, 16, who plays the harp, had the rare challenge and opportunity to perform live, high above and across 360-degree stunning views of London’s iconic skyline, as the guests enjoyed supper on the 34th floor of the BT Tower – and on a rotating platform too. No longer open to the public, getting access to one of London’s most dramatic venues was indeed a memorable experience for our young violinist and harpist, as the guests were indulged with an evening of exquisite playing. Also performing was a group of brilliant and gifted young actors from the Shakespeare Schools’ Festival Theatre Company. On top of this, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg was the surprise guest speaker for the evening, when he spoke of his admiration for the creativity, skills and hard work that the young people had put into developing their amazing talents.

In a musical evening curated by our volunteer programmer, Julia Roth, AYM presented the first of our 2012 Brilliante Concerts in London in support of our fundraising efforts.

Generously hosted by our newest Trustee, Dr Catherine Hogel and her husband, Mr Ben Mardle, more than 40 guests enjoyed an evening of musical entertainment in which they were first treated to 12-year old Michael’s exciting version of two movements from Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto Opus 3 #6. This opening piece was followed by a sublime interpretation of Debussy’s piano prelude “La Cathedrale Engloutie” (The Sunken Cathedral) by Laura, aged 16. Ending the concert was Ben’s masterful playing of Vinter’s Hunter’s Moon on the French horn; this proved to be a highly enjoyable finale, and of such accomplished maturity for a player at just 14 years of age. Joining the young musicians was AYM’s regular accompanist, Dominic John, for an evening of inspirational and superb music making.

For more on our performers please go to The Performers

Rebecca, a 14-year-old oboist and Karol, a 14-year-old pianist are the lucky young musicians who were given fully-funded places on a newly-created summer school – The Ingenium Academy, hosted at Winchester College. The international school, which opened its doors just last year, runs in July and August. Students are able to attend for one, two or three full weeks, with the longest course valued at almost £3,000 per student.
“Ingenium Academy offers its students a unique musical and cultural experience with exclusive tuition from world-renowned musicians, performances in top British venues and the opportunity to meet like-minded friends from all over the world within an environment of creative excellence. The team includes names from the Royal Academy of Music, the City of London Sinfonia, the World Youth Choir, the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and multi-grammy award winning a cappella group The Swingle Singers.”
The Ingenium Academy asked AYM to select two of our Award winners, aged between 14 and 18, whom we felt would derive the most benefit from attending their intensive course. After a short application process, Rebecca and Karol were chosen. Both gave the most compelling reasons to develop their musical learning and experiences and were also selected for their consistency and musical progression.
Rebecca, who studies at Junior Guildhall, is a member of Enfield Young Symphony Orchestra and the Quintet connected to this orchestra; she achieved her Grade 8 examinations three years ago. She said that she wanted to “experience what it's like to play in an advanced ensemble”. Rebecca is also a member of Junior Guildhall Symphony Orchestra and a quintet at Junior Guildhall, which she attends every Saturday. “Through this brilliant opportunity, I would like to meet new people that I could play with as well as increase my musical repertoire and vocabulary”.
Karol, a privately taught pianist, has ambitions to become a composer. As he puts it “this inner desire is still within me, but I feel that I have not yet been given the chance to fully express my musical talent and the opportunity to broaden my musical understanding. This course would also be a great opportunity for me to meet other talented musicians, learn from others and gain musical experience that I could use in the future. There are days when I think that I really would like to be surrounded by music, play it and compose, but this is only a wish, as my parents can’t afford such a course.”
AYM thanks the Ingenium Academy for helping two of our award winners reach another stage in their musical development; we anticipated that the second year of the summer school would be as rewarding and exciting for the international students as last year. Visit: http://www.ingeniumacademy.com/