Member blog: Communication is key

After a green light from the government, the Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra resumed in-person rehearsals, but with half its players joining in from home. Alex Burns, the orchestra's Publicity Officer, tells us more about the journey

The Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) is very well-organised and plans about 18 months ahead of time. When we decided to stop rehearsing on 15 March, we had performances in the diary for June and July, and had just signed off on our 2020/21 season, so the COVID-19 lockdown put a real spanner in the works for us!

We quickly reverted to online rehearsals, via Zoom, while behind the scenes, our committee and MD were planning how we could resume rehearsals and what all this meant for us. Advice changed quickly, so we started meeting once per month to try and stay on top of things. We decided it would be good to split into two sub-groups and consider ‘What does this mean for us?’ and ‘What does this mean for our audience?'. We worked through Making Music’s Planning for the future resources, then we came together to present our findings and talk things through. This early scenario planning was really critical for us and it allowed us to act swiftly later on.

Earlier on in the summer...we submitted a funding application to the National Lottery Community Fund’s COVID Emergency Fund for c. £3,000 towards audio-visual equipment so we could livestream rehearsals to people at home

By August, we had got about as far as we could go and were just waiting for guidance from the government and a green light to resume in-person rehearsals. On 13 August the time finally came and we began frantically finalising our plans to rehearse again. Our risk assessment was completed by our Welfare Officer and Chair, together with staff at our rehearsal venue, the Victoria Hall. Luckily, one of our first violins is an architect and he had created 2D and 3D designs of how we could fit into the space with the required social distancing in place.

Animation showing the SPO's layout plans for socially distanced rehearsals

We knew that we would not be able to accommodate all 71 of our regular players, but we also suspected not all of them would feel comfortable to come back yet anyway, so we polled the members on a) who wanted to come back, b) who didn’t, and c) who wasn’t sure. Once we had the results, we knew which scenario was best to take.

Earlier on in the summer, knowing that this would be the case, we submitted a funding application to the National Lottery Community Fund’s COVID Emergency Fund for c. £3,000 towards audio-visual equipment so we could livestream rehearsals to people at home. We found out our application had been successful on 21 August and so we began ordering equipment so everything would be ready for our first rehearsal back on 8 September.

Talk to your membership – they all have skills, ideas and contacts. What are their hopes and concerns about returning to rehearsals and concerts?

Surprisingly, around 90% of our members wanted to return to rehearsing in person so we decided to split the orchestra into two teams: Team Lyceum & Team Crucible (named after our wonderful Sheffield theatres). Each team rehearses on alternate weeks and whoever isn’t ‘live’ at rehearsal (including the other 10% of players) joins in from home via the livestream.

At the time of writing, we’ve had five socially distanced rehearsals and although it’s not the same, it’s been well worth all the effort. Everyone who has attended has felt safe at rehearsals and has had an enjoyable time making music again, which is the most important thing.

SPO Conductor, George Morton, with a suitably themed face covering!

We’ve not got any live concerts planned yet as our main focus has been on our members and getting back to playing as a group again, but we’ll probably start thinking about this again in the new year.

If we had one piece of advice to other groups wanting to get back to in-person rehearsals again it would be: communicate.

Talk to your membership – they all have skills, ideas and contacts. What are their hopes and concerns about returning to rehearsals and concerts? 

Talk to your community – if your venue isn’t suitable are other groups in your area having success with another venue? Are you struggling with something that another group seems to have overcome?

Talk to Making Music – they are fantastic and will see you right with whatever you need help with (Ed: Thanks guys!).

• The Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) has been making music in the Steel City for over 70 years and draws on players of all backgrounds from across Yorkshire & the Humber, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire. Find out more on their website, or follow on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube

Has your leisure-time music group resumed in-person activities? If you'd like to write a blog about your experiences, or you have any pictures of socially distanced rehearsals you'd like to share, get in touch