Hello! Myself and my good friend and colleague Asher Oliver are going to be embarking on the entire Camino Frances Pilgrimage in April. This is an 800km journey starting in southern France (Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port), and ending on the Spanish Atlantic coast (Santiago de Compostela) which we will be attempting across 18-20 days utilising a mixture of hiking and cycling.

We share a passion for music education, and I truly believe music making at a primary school age is such an important aspect of a child’s development aiding in strengthening neural pathways, emotional connections, literacy and numeracy skills as well as the positive effect music can have on mood and outlook. It is also an aspect of the national pedagogy that has suffered, under the continuous strain and pressure laid onto the education sector across multiple decades.

Having run a Primary Schools Singing Programme for two and a half years (reaching in total around 1600 children) I have seen the benefits first hand for these children, and I’m ever so grateful to those nine schools that have engaged with this initiative. To that end, I am asking for a small donation to help contribute to these schools music budgets, so that they can ensure that music-making continues to play an integral part of their schools ethoses and curricula.

This money could help a child realise a talent they wouldn’t know they had, or help pay for class-wide instrumental lessons. Some may even use the money to ensure they can keep participating in the Singing Programme! . I have talked at great length with these schools of the benefits of musical education, and now it is time to action that sentiment. The money from this page will be split equally between the nine schools. These are all state-funded primary schools in the South of England and have agreed to ring-fence the money received purely for musical education in their schools.

Asher, likewise, is raising funds for the music department at Guildford Cathedral, helping to futureproof the funding for this Cathedral Choir and Organists, and helping to preserve a tradition that has been an integral part of this country and the church, for hundreds of years. He will be doing this through a separate page.

Thank you for supporting our pilgrimage :)