About Us
In 1921 celebrated English tenor Gervase Elwes died in a railway accident while touring the USA at the height of his career. He was known not only for his musical talent but also for his concern and support for fellow musicians. His friends, led by Elgar and Vaughan Williams, founded Help Musicians (known for many decades as the Musicians Benevolent Fund) to continue these charitable aims in his honour.
Help Musicians is a charity that loves music and for 101 years has been working hard to make a meaningful difference to the lives of musicians across the UK. The people behind the music really matter and we want to do all we can to ensure that they thrive.
A musicians’ life can be precarious with ups and downs throughout a career. Opportunities must be hard-won, whilst challenges come along all too easily, with unsteady income and physical and mental health concerns common issues to navigate. Musicians are mostly freelance, with little support or training available for the wider skills they need to support career longevity.
In addition, musical training can take many years and, along with investing in instruments and other equipment, puts up financial barriers to creative progression. Help Musicians offers a broad range of help to support music creators in times of crisis and opportunity – empowering musicians across the UK to achieve their creative potential and sustain a career in music.
With a growing presence right across the UK, we continue reaching out to ensure we engage with the music profession across all genres of music, and from professional musicians just starting out to those in retirement.
What makes us different?
Since 1921 we’ve been adapting to meet musicians changing needs. Our support is:
Essential: providing a lifetime of support, when it’s needed most
Enduring: making a meaningful difference now and for the long-term
Our support is aimed at professional musicians; by that we mean those aged 18 or over who earn 50% or more of their income from performing music, composing/creating music or in a role requiring a high level of musical skill (e.g., arranger, instrumental teacher, sound engineer, instrument maker, music therapist etc).
The staff team and Trustees at Help Musicians are passionate about creating a world where musicians thrive. We pride ourselves on our personal approach – listening to musicians’ needs and then offering bespoke and targeted solutions. Over the last centenary Help Musicians support has continually adapted, responding to musicians evolving needs, growing our range of help and developing new support initiatives to ensure our help is relevant to those we seek to support.
Everything we do is shaped by research and knowledge. Structured research projects (often through partnership), along with regular surveys to gather musicians’ views ensures that our work is effective and proactive. It’s vital that we offer targeted support to make a real difference today along with gathering and acting upon insight to ensure we recognise the challenges the next generation will face. This enables us to deploy our resources wisely and effectively in order to provide a lifetime of support for musicians when it’s needed most. And this insight informs our growing range of forward-looking services and advice, designed to empower musicians to steer away from issues that may otherwise present bigger problems further down the track.
Help Musicians is a unique, independent charity working in partnership with others right across the music industry to make a meaningful difference to the lives of professional musicians. Offering a wide spectrum of research-led support we work proactively to provide help, support and opportunity across all genres of music and all areas of the UK.
How do we Help?
We understand that being a musician can present both opportunities and challenges, so our range of help encourages musicians creative and career development, along with supporting their health and wellbeing so they can sustain long and healthy career. This balanced approach is unique – no other music charity offers the same breadth of support across creativity, business skills, and health and welfare.
Recognising that each musician is an individual, our support is designed to give musicians choice and flexibility in how we might help them, understanding that people need different support options as their needs develop or change over time.
Our wide range of help includes:
- Creative funding, support to ensure that musicians achieve their creative potential, which includes financial help to develop their skills, grow their portfolio and build a career.
- Business skills/Mentoring; like anyone, musicians benefit from growing their skills, learning from others and being encouraged to achieve their full potential as creative individuals. That’s why at Help Musicians we offer direct help to musicians to grow their business skills as well as connecting them with others who can help and encourage them to achieve their best.
- Crisis support, providing a vital lifeline of financial, practical and emotional support for musicians facing a sudden illness, accident, emotional problem or other career crisis.
- Help with long term illness, terminal illness and bereavement, assisting with therapy, medical treatment and other associated costs. Our partnership with the British Association of Performing Arts Medicine (BPAM) gives musicians access to highly-skilled specialists and our own team usually undertake household visits to make sure we fully understand each musician’s needs.
- Retirement/end-of-life care, including financial help, regular visits, respite breaks (for the older person and/or their carer) and help with mobility or domestic aids and adaptations.
- Hearing Health Scheme, providing access to heavily-subsidised specialist hearing assessment and bespoke hearing protection.
- Music Minds Matter, a service which offers a huge range of support to help people with a wide spectrum of mental health needs, and available 24-7.
- Research: understanding musicians needs and the ever-changing landscape they are in is vital to ensuring our help delivers the most impact to the people we aim to help. So, we make sure that our work is informed by external research and by regularly seeking insight and feedback from those we help.
Our Funding
We rely completely on donations from music-lovers. Legacies have, for many decades, being a particularly helpful source of income. We have invested these funds well, and were pleased to deploy some of these reserves during the covid pandemic to offer much needed financial resources to thousands of musicians in desperate financial need.
Currently, our investments generate income which covers all of the charity’s overheads. So, our current fundraising comes with our “100% pledge”, whereby we pledge to cover all of the charity’s overheads with income from our investment portfolio, so donors can be sure that every penny they give goes straight to the frontline.
Our Team
The charity’s senior leadership team consists of three Directors and a team of eleven Heads of department. Further information on the team can be found here.