The National Schools Singing Programme [NSSP], an ambitious and highly successful music education initiative founded and funded by £4 million in funding from the Hamish Ogston Foundation, recently celebrated its second birthday by welcoming its first group of Anglican cathedrals to the scheme in what is a major expansion which will give thousands more state school children across the UK the opportunity for a deep and continuing engagement with music.
The NSSP is widely regarded as the UK’s leading choral education programme, offering funding to religious institutions across the UK, from Portsmouth to Aberdeen, to employ choral directors, who deliver whole-class singing sessions in schools every week.
The aim of the NSSP is to combat declining availability of specialist music lessons for children at state schools, particularly those in the most socially marginalised and economically deprived areas, and to provide pathways for musically talented young people to go on to attend some of the country’s leading universities and conservatoires. 27 of the UK’s 32 Catholic dioceses are now signed up to the NSSP, in a programme that now engages more than 175 schools and over 17,000 children every week.
This latest expansion, which, in a programme first, includes non-denominational schools, means an anticipated total of 20,000 children will benefit from participation in the scheme, at over 200 schools nationally.
In support of this announcement, we worked with the Hamish Ogston Foundation and the NSSP to prepare, sell-in and distribute a dedicated press release, issued to top target media. Widespread coverage was secured, including broadcast interviews with BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio Sheffield and Premier Christian Radio, as well as articles across print and digital media, including those in The Times and The Yorkshire Post, to name a few.
