Richard Stilgoe OBE with Cherubim Young Artist Julia White and Trust founder Clancy Steer

The Cherubim Music Trust was established as a charitable trust deed in 2001. It was founded as a direct and personal response to the increasing difficulties faced by many of Britain’s young musicians. By supporting young talent, Cherubim is helping a new generation of world-class musicians. Brought into existence by an initial donation from the Gosling Foundation, the Trust has gone from strength to strength, bridging a keenly-felt gap in the experience of many young musicians.

Our aim is to help the next generation of world class musicians to take a vital step from talented student to fully fledged professional by providing the right instrument, which is often well beyond the young musician’s reach. Other musical charities, trusts and loan funds exist, and most of these offer assistance in the form of a low interest loan at post-graduate level when the student is about to embark on a professional career.

However, there are very few trusts able to offer significant grants to fund musical instruments at a student level, or provide help with upgrading to a professional quality instrument at this stage. Such schemes are rare and although of tremendous benefit to adult musicians, they often ignore the fact that a young person may already be encumbered with a large student debt.

Cherubim’s Fine Instrument Loan Scheme lends the required instruments to young artists both from our steadily increasing bank of instruments, as well as by brokering the loan of an instrument made available by a generous donor. This may be a new purchase or indeed a beloved instrument the owner no longer plays but would like a young professional to practice or perform on.

Cherubim also assists young musicians by offering opporttunities to perform in fund-raising concerts, where sponsors have the opportunity to follow the artists’ achievements, and see and hear their instruments played. We believe that this mutual support and assistance is of great value to all concerned. The young musicians benefit from being able to “earn” their awards by playing to paying audiences in professional conditions and they appreciate such a performance opportunity.

Meanwhile the Trust appreciates that these events will raise public awareness of our work, whilst presenting a valuable and intimate way of thanking present sponsors and hopefully attracting new ones.

The Cherubim Trust owes its existence to Clancy Steer, who founded it in response to her personal experience and keen understanding of the needs of young musicians:

“My daughter Serafina took up the harp of her own volition aged seven. To begin with, she had access to a table harp (clarsach), but then we were able to buy an aged Pleyel pedal harp for £1200. After the VIth form at Chethams Specialist Music School, where she played a first-rate concert harp, we were faced in 2000 with buying her a £ 10,000 instrument to take to music college, which we could only have met by taking out a loan. For us, a genuine fairy godmother appeared and provided a suitable instrument, which Serafina still uses in her career as a harpist and songwriter.”

By way of gratitude Clancy took steps to create the Cherubim Music Trust to help others in similar situations.

The National Foundation for Youth Music confirms that after years of inadequate funding and the advent of student loans, many talented student musicians do not have the resources to acquire instruments that match their performance needs. The difference in the cost of a good student instrument and that of a professional one is measured in thousands of pounds. Whilst this is not one of the world’s most urgent issues, it is a huge problem for most young musicians starting out in the world.