UPDATE 1st March

Dear all, 

Thank you so much for your kind donations so far! We are delighted to hit our initial target of £500 so quickly and have now increased this to £1000! In terms of progress, we have completed grade 2 and 3 exams (waiting for the results from ABRSM) and are now working on grade 4 repertoire. If we complete the challenge earlier than planned, we will attempt to go up to grade 6 by December! We will continue to update you as we go along in the coming months. Please do continue to check out our progress @shrewsburyhighschoolmusic on Instagram. 

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Mr Deakin and Mr Bunn are the Senior and Junior Directors of Music at Shrewsbury High School, GDST. One cold December evening late in 2020, they said to each other: "how cool would it be to learn a brand new instrument from scratch and try and get to say...grade 5 or 6 in a year?! We could set a challenge and do some fundraising!" Mr Bunn has been keen to learn the clarinet for many years, as other members of his family also play this instrument. For Mr Deakin, it has been a life-long dream to learn how to play the cello as it is one of the most beautiful instruments. But then he realised that he didn't want to have to carry a huge case around everywhere, so he decided to learn the violin instead...

...  

Anyway, after 6 weeks of scratching/scraping/squeaking/squawking our way through our new challenge (whilst both slightly regretting those optimistic words, said after 17 cups of coffee on a long day of recording for Carol Service 2020), we are both preparing to take our grade 2 exams in March 2021! We are aiming to achieve grade 5 on our new instruments by the end of the calendar year, in the winter exam season sometime in December. As well as this being a personal challenge, we are raising money for Shrewsbury Food Bank at Barnabas Church Centre, Shrewsbury SY3 7DN, to try and help some of the most vulnerable members in our community during Christmas 2021. The past 12 months have been difficult for everyone, but winter - and particularly Christmas - represent the most challenging period of all for many, and we would love to give our support during this time... 

We are aiming to raise as much money as possible throughout 2021, with a view to submitting our donation at the start of December to aide Barnabas throughout the Christmas period. We would absolutely love to surpass our target of £500 and would be very grateful for any amount of support you could give us - big or small - towards hitting this goal. We will be posting regular updates, vlogs (for your amusement and entertainment) and exam certificates (well, hopefully!) to keep you up-to-date with our progress throughout the challenge.

Thank you so much in advance for your support.

With best wishes,

Mr Deakin 

Mr Bunn