Sherry Music Academy started life as "Sherry Music Family", a virtual music school with its first concert staged online during COVID. The "Family" continued to grow until in 2023 Sherry Music Academy was formed as a non-profit organisation, registered as a UK charity in June 2025. So far we have staged around 100 concerts open to the community, free of charge. Our youth chamber orchestra for 8 to 18-year-olds is multi-cultural with a large component of Chinese members, and we have staged successful festival events combining orchestral music with traditions such as dumpling-making and Beijing opera every Lunar New Year. In 2023 we added the Sherry Jazz Ensemble, a career gateway platform for newly-graduated musicians, which entertains monthly at the Sands End Arts and Community Centre and other local venues such as Fulham Pier, and which received funding from LBHF in December 2024. Also in 2024 we were invited to provide a workshop on musical instruments and performance at Sir John Lillee School, which was designed to help address the shortage of music teaching and instrumental resources in the state system. This laid the foundation for the first focus of our appeal, i.e. giving access to music and instruments to more children, and we are now working in coordination with the Tri-Borough Music Hub to that end. Then in 2025 we were invited to provide musical entertainment for seniors at the LBHF Silver Social Event held at Sands End Arts and Community Centre, which was our first step towards accomplishing another of our charitable aims, i.e. bringing comfort to the sick, elderly, and mentally-challenged by means of our Duke of Edinburgh Award musical volunteers. In the meantime we have reached out to one of the nation's top music therapy providers and are cooperating with them towards that goal. The challenge, of course, is financing all the altruistic objectives we would like to achieve. So far we have managed by depending on contributions from families who are fortunate enough to pay for their children's music education in the case of orchestral performances, as well as the generosity of LBHF council in regard to the Jazz and seniors' events. However, in order to fulfill our goals of placing instruments in the hands of more deserving children, and also reaching out to more institutions where people are in need of musical therapy, we will require support on a correspondingly more ambitious scale. Thank you in advance for your kind consideration!
