THE ULSTER ORCHESTRA
A BIT OF BACKGROUND
Corporate Sponsorship with the Ulster Orchestra provides your business the perfect opportunity to support the work of Northern Ireland’s only professional symphony orchestra. When you partner with the Ulster Orchestra, you help play a crucial role in creating extraordinary performances, inspiring learning and participation through a diverse range of community outreach programmes.
The Ulster Orchestra is committed to creating sponsorship opportunities that enable both the business and the Orchestra to benefit and thrive. Your support can be harnessed in a number of ways with opportunities to tailor our corporate offering to your specific needs and desires. Your business can play a crucial role in helping the Ulster Orchestra develop and deliver an ambitious programme both on stage and in the heart of our communities.
Our Corporate Partnerships team can work with you to develop a bespoke package to meet the interests and objectives of your business.
Partnering with the Ulster Orchestra through sponsorship is an opportunity to help champion Northern Ireland’s vibrant and diverse arts and cultural sector. Our sponsorship programme provides opportunities to profile your business in front of a wide variety of audiences throughout the concert season.
There are four core areas that a business can support the work the orchestra.
SPONSORSHIP DETAILS
1.Elevate – “to raise to a higher position”
UO is passionate and committed to establishing talent pathways to ensure that the next generation of musical talent whether it be musicians, composers, conductors can learn and develop. We are committed to removing barriers to accessing opportunities like this to Belfast, to showcase our vibrant city to individuals across the globe.
PES - The Ulster Orchestra’s Professional Experience Scheme, in partnership with the Ulster Youth Orchestra selects 7 emerging professional to receive specialist training and professional performance opportunities with the Ulster Orchestra. Annual project that runs alongside the concert season.
Conductors Masterclass - Over four days, 8 conductors, in the early stage of their careers participate in an immersive learning experience led by the Ulster Orchestra’s Honorary Principal Guest Conductor, Jac Van Steen. Participants get to lead a full symphony orchestra over three days culminating in a live concert performance. Bi-annual event in June. 7 of the 11 previous masterclass participants have returned to lead the orchestra.
2. Excellence – “an outstanding quality”
Concert Sponsorship - A business can sponsor a specific event it may be to introduce themselves to a new audience demographic or aligning your brand with a particular concert that shares your purpose or passion.
Regional Concerts - UO performs classical repertoire across Northern Ireland.
On Your Doorstep - Allows for smaller scale performances bringing the orchestra off the stage and into community settings such as libraries, community groups, care homes.
3. Engage – “to become involved in”
Come & Play - The Ulster Orchestra invites musicians from grade 4 and above to join the orchestra in a day of rehearsal and performance. Participants will get a hands-on experience of being part of a professional orchestra as well as picking up some tips and inspiration. 110 people took part in Come & Play in 2023
Salon Sessions - Provides opportunities for the orchestra to collaborate and perform alongside professional musicians, artists, writers whose work does not fall within the classical genre.
Green Room - Creating content and a digital space to create conversation and expand knowledge around the work of conductors, composers and musicians. Allowing audiences to engage with the wider context of a piece of music.
4. Empower – “to give the power to do something”
Crescendo is an early intervention project enabling primary aged pupils to engage with music, learning theory and instruments culminating in an end of year performance with the full orchestra in front of their families at the Ulster Hall. 1,070 pupils (P1-P7) across 4 schools participated in Crescendo.
Primary Schools Concerts Each year, the Ulster Orchestra performs primary school concerts around Northern Ireland. We incorporate suitable curriculum links as well as deliver an exciting and inspiring concert for Key Stage 2 students. They happen in Belfast, Derry/Londonderry, Newry, Omagh & Enniskillen in November each year. In 2023, 4,089 pupils and teachers from 72 schools attended a schools concert.
Wellbeing Project aims to reduce isolation and vulnerability and to improve the health and wellbeing of older people by providing access to performances by professional musicians and opportunities for refreshments and chatting. In 2023 146 older people were visited by our wellbeing workshops.
Inspiration Workshops for Schools are outreach performances by small ensembles of Ulster Orchestra musicians which are delivered in both primary and post-primary schools – particularly those schools where there is limited music provision or exposure to the orchestral experience. The performances are a combination of sounds and images designed to inform and enlighten pupils to the orchestra, it’s instruments and orchestral music. In the academic year 2022-23, our musicians visited 4910 primary and post -primary students from twenty-four different schools across Northern Ireland to deliver a one-hour interactive show, ‘Inside the Music’. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.