London Consorts of Winds

Annual Report 2008 - dispute with South London Community Music (SLCM)

Background

We have taken the unusual step of posting our Annual Report on our web site in order to set out the extraordinary events which took place in 2008 affecting our ensemble, and which provide the background to our change of name from Southwark Consorts of Winds to London Consorts of Winds. The following report was agreed by our members at the AGM on February 4th 2009.

Annual Report Text

This has been a very strange year, since it has included both our most successful performance programme so far, and a long and difficult dispute with our former parent charity South London Community Music as we sought to negotiate a separation of ways.

We performed foyer music twice at the Horniman Museum in June and November, and in both cases attracted large and enthusiastic audiences. The Museum are so pleased with our performances there that they have invited us to perform a third time in 2009, in April.

We gave two formal concerts. We performed in aid of the Fair Trade Foundation at Herne Hill United Church in February. The audience was our largest yet, and a substantial sum was raised for the Foundation.

We performed at All Saints West Dulwich, in July, in aid of the Organ Fund. Again, there was a good audience, funds were raised for a worthy cause, and we were able to make imaginative usage of the interesting performance spaces in the Church.

We gave two outdoor performances, one in July at Trinity Square Gardens, and one in October in Ruskin Park. These were enjoyable ways of bringing together members of the different Consorts, and we hope these events will continue.

The Ancient and Modern Consort completed a project with Forum Composers Group, performing a concert in October giving the premieres of pieces the members of Forum had been writing over the previous year.

Our three ensembles have maintained a full membership. Where players have left, they have been replaced without much difficulty. All three ensembles are well established, with their own developing range of repertoire, and the playing standard of the ensembles continues to rise.

Roger Cawkwell, the conductor of the Classical Consort, decided to give up his position. We are sad to see him go, and would like record our thanks for all his hard work and enthusiasm.

Our income continued to exceed our expenditure which, but for the dispute with SLCM, would have left us in a very strong position to develop the group further.

We could therefore be reporting that 2008 was our best year yet. However, it was marred by a difficult and protracted dispute with out former parent charity, SLCM.

The first signs of the dispute appeared at the 2008 SLCM AGM, when the SLCM Musical Director made some unfounded criticisms of our ensemble, and was forced to withdraw them when his errors were pointed out.

After some debate, our Committee decided that we were no longer welcome in SLCM, and a General Meeting was held in July to discuss this. There was a unanimous vote to give the Committee authority to negotiate a separation from SLCM.

Meanwhile, we stopped collecting subscriptions, since there seemed little point in handing over more money when we were seeking to withdraw and take with us the funds administered on our behalf.

In June, a longer set of charges were levied against SCW at a meeting of the SLCM Trustees. None of the points had any substance, with the exception that subscriptions had not been paid. However, the Trustees decided that, on the basis of these untrue statements, that SCW was no longer functioning properly, and that our Committee no longer had any standing. They then refused to negotiate with us over our wish to go our own way.

It seems clear with hindsight that this attack on SCW was pre-planned. There is no doubt that, by not collecting subscriptions, the SCW Committee made this attack easier to launch. Equally, it seems clear that the attack would have been made anyway, and the end result - claiming that we were no longer functioning - would probably have been the same.

We sought to have meetings and discussions with SLCM on this issue. We sought the mediation of Making Music in the dispute. The response of SLCM in each case was to fail to respond to messages and to simply ignore all our attempts to discuss the dispute in an adult manner.

The SLCM Trustees announced that the assets and name of SCW belonged to SLCM, and have been impervious to any arguments to the contrary. We sought advice on the question of the assets from the Auditor of SLCM, who advised that paying our funds to us would have been in order. SLCM worked hard to discredit this advice.

There seems little doubt that SLCM could have chosen to pay to the new, independent, SCW the funds which it had administered on our behalf. However, we have had the sense throughout this dispute that we have not been dealing with a reasonable group of people with whom it is possible to have an intelligent discussion, but with a group who have a pre-agreed plan of attack and who respond in an aggressively to any attempt to question them - refusing to reply to requests for meetings, sending out orders by email, and refusing all attempts at dialogue.

We therefore found ourselves, in September, at the point where SLCM had declared that we were no longer functioning, were refusing to discuss with us the transfer of our assets, and even were claiming they owned our name.

The SCW Committee therefore took the following steps:

• wrote to SLCM at length refuting their position.
• agreed a set of rules for an independent SCW, with the Committee members as the founding members.
• agreed to open a bank account.
• registered the name Southwark Consorts of Winds as our business name, and registered several internet domain names for SCW.

We continued to work to achieve some form of dialogue with SLCM, but all our attempts were rebuffed - they even turned down an offer by the Chief Executive of Making Music to host a meeting to discuss the dispute.

SLCM also blocked our attempt to join Making Music under the name of Southwark Consorts of Winds, and this effectively blocked our attempts to obtain performance insurance at a reasonable price. Further, they wrote to the Director of the Horniman Museum claiming to own our name, and objecting to our performing there under our own name.

The Committee therefore decided:

• to perform at the Horniman Museum as the London Consorts of Winds.
• to set up yet another new organisation with that name, and to join Making Music under that name, in order to obtain insurance cover.
• to collect subscriptions from members who had not previously paid in 2008, and to pay these into the SCW bank account established earlier.

We are starting 2009 on a reasonably secure financial basis, since the bulk of the subscriptions for 2008 are in our bank account, and yet we incurred relatively few costs in 2008. We are therefore hoping to move forward in 2009 to achieve even more in our music making, and without the baleful shadow of SLCM hanging over our work.