Perform. Educate. Inspire.

Leicester MusicFest is a music education charity built around an annual, 2-day festival offering high-quality, accessible performance and music education opportunities to the diverse community of Leicester.
 

Each February, over 200 musicians take part in a packed programme of concerts, workshops, masterclasses and competitions. The festival was founded in 2016 by a team of professional musicians and teachers concerned by a lack of high-quality and accessible performance opportunities for young people and amateur musicians in Leicester. Through the festival, we aim to enrich the cultural life of Leicester and Leicestershire, offering opportunities for people of all ages, abilities and demographics to perform, learn and be inspired.

We also run a growing outreach programme throughout the year, with three main strands:
 

• Our Instrument Rehoming Scheme collects, cleans and repairs unwanted instruments and rehomes them to students in need. The scheme has rehomed 125 instruments to date.

• Our Forest Gamelan project installs outdoor music classrooms in primary schools, combining the well-documented benefits of both music education and outdoor learning. We have a run a successful pilot project at Tudor Grange Samworth Academy over the past two years, and have just secured funding for a second project based at Robert Bakewell Primary School in Loughborough.

• Our Schools Outreach strand sees us partnering with local schools to provide workshops, performance projects and music trips. This year we have partnered on an opportunity for young organists from state schools to play at the Temple Church in London; an aspiration-raising residential trip to perform at Ampleforth Abbey for an ambitious school choir who would otherwise have been unable to afford to take up the invitation; support for Charnwood College, Loughborough, in setting up a new music department, and ongoing instrument provision for Hinckley Schools Orchestra.