Crucial fund-raising year for music at Chichester Cathedral

SussexWorld

Chichester Cathedral is aiming to ensure the long-term future of the music-making which has shaped its daily life and worship across nine and a half centuries.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always a

00:06huge pleasure to speak to the Dean of Chichester, Edward Dallor. Now Edward, you are masterminding

00:12a really important initiative at the moment, setting up, bringing to fruition an endowment

00:18trust, the Chichester Cathedral Platinum Endowment Trust for Music, to ensure that Chichester's

00:24incredibly important musical tradition continues. Why does this have to happen?

00:34Thank you, Phil. Yes, thanks for inviting me on. And yes, the choir that we have at

00:44Chichester Cathedral is hundreds of years old, there have been some very famous people

00:51associated with it in the past, and as people who came to the recent carol services and other

01:00services at the cathedral will know, it really is of a world-class standard, and we're determined

01:09to preserve that for future generations as something that we contribute to everybody

01:19else. I think it was John Rutter, a modern composer, who said that a cathedral without

01:32a choir is like a body without a soul, and the choir is absolutely integral to the life and

01:41ministry of the cathedral, and I think integral to what people expect to find when they come here.

01:50And it's wonderful that it is of such a high standard. We have got a fund for cathedral music,

01:58which unfortunately is slowly depleting, and well, no, it's not slowly depleting, it's actually quite

02:05rapidly depleting, and as people might be aware from things that have been in the news recently,

02:13almost all cathedrals do have quite significant financial challenges at the moment, and Chichester

02:18is certainly no exception to that. So we're trying to build up this endowment fund with the

02:26hope that if it builds to a certain level of around £10 million, then that will really safeguard

02:36very good choral music at Chichester Cathedral in perpetuity, because the interest that comes

02:43from that will be sufficient every year to pay for what is involved in having a really good music

02:50programme, which is, for us, it's over £400,000 a year that it costs to keep music going at the

03:01standard that we have it. So we would love to get to that figure where it's giving off sufficient

03:08interest for us to be able to pay for that from the interest, but we have a long way to go yet.

03:15The point is, this is you really looking long term, isn't it? Absolutely safeguarding.

03:20Yes, exactly. Yes, yes. We would like to get to a stage where it was safeguarded for the long term,

03:31and we weren't living sort of hand to mouth each year. Exactly.

03:39Sorry, the Cathedral itself has got things off to a good start by investing £2 million

03:44towards this endowment. You were hoping to reach £5 million in the endowment by

03:49early next year. Just hoping the momentum will take it and you can start to live off that interest.

03:55Yes, exactly. Yes. As you say, the fund was started with the chapter of the Cathedral

04:03putting in £2 million and we have got a real target that by this time next year,

04:11we'd really like to be within sight of the first £5 million. And then if we are,

04:16then we think that will give us a sort of optimism about the future, really.

04:21Well, I was going to ask you about optimism. Are you confident? Or is this absolutely

04:27mind boggling? We are talking about big numbers, aren't we? Is it daunting? Or is it exciting?

04:32A challenge? What is it?

04:36It slightly depends kind of what mood I'm in when you ask me. I think it is something that we

04:49do feel that there are enough people who really care about what we have, what we offer here,

05:00that it should be within reach and we will build it up through. We've had some very generous

05:13benefactions, donations so far. So, we will build it up through that, through people very generously

05:19leaving legacies to us. And so, really, it will build up through people's generosity.

05:29What we can't do is apply to other trusts to build up an endowment. So, while the idea is that while

05:39the endowment builds up, we also look to individuals and other bodies that might be

05:44interested to do, for example, sponsorship of individual foresterships and those sorts of

05:52things. So, those sponsorships will continue up to the point where there's enough money

05:58in the endowment that we don't need them so much any longer. So, it's really a combination of,

06:04for the long term, building up the endowment, and then in the shorter term,

06:09trying to get sponsorship for the ongoing activities on a sort of pay-as-you-go basis.

06:16It does sound quite daunting, but exciting too.

06:19Wishing you all the very, very best with that. Thank you and good luck.

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