05 Sep Summer Concerts – how did it go?
2025 Festival of Music – concerts beside Jack’s Lake
Four concerts were held, between 14th June and 3rd August. Despite threatened rain a couple of times, all were able to go ahead as planned. An estimated total of around 600 people attended the four events. In the event of heavy rain, arrangements had been made to hold the concerts under cover. Thank you to all of you who came along – it was fantastic to see so many of you, and that you could support the charities.
The Festival was once again directed by and featured internationally acclaimed soprano, Ilona Domnich, who invited a wonderfully talented array of musicians and vocalists to join her, and also a selection of gifted music students. We’ll add a short video of highlights here when we have it.
The concerts were widely publicised on various websites and by poster, social media and newsletters, so as to reach most areas adjacent or near to the Common. These include in particular residents and businesses in High Barnet, New Barnet, East Barnet, Cockfosters, Hadley Green, Hadley Highstone and Hadley Wood.
Generous sponsorship covered the staging costs (musicians, sound etc), which allowed us to ensure that all concert proceeds could be used for charitable purposes, and we were able to claim Gift Aid on the event donations.
Overall we raised £2,800 for the World Heart Beat Music Academy (Marcia Elton Bursary), which will help support a young singer in the coming year, and £4,700 for Monken Hadley Common Trust.
The Trust relies largely on membership, donations and rental income to fund its work maintaining Monken Hadley Common. In a typical year, we might spend £6,000-9,000 on forestry work and grass cutting, and probably the same again on larger projects (bollards, car park maintenance etc). Add insurance to that, and it can be clearly seen how important income from the concerts is to our work.
The concerts require careful advance planning to book the musicians and prepare for the events, and the planning cycle has already started for 2026. We will therefore be enormously grateful for offers of sponsorship for next year to enable us to plan the Festival with confidence. If you think you or your organisation could help in this way, please have a look at this summary of sponsorship possibilities, and get in touch.
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