'Classical music was not for the likes of us': How the RLPO's residency is transforming a hungry creative scene in Barrow-in-Furness

On a cold, wet and windy night in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, earlier this year, the Forum Arts Centre was packed for a concert by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO), marking the start of a new residency in a town that hadn’t seen a performance by a professional symphony orchestra for many decades. The orchestra’s Venezuelan chief conductor, Domingo Hindoyan, conducted Bizet’s Carmen Prelude and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the latter accompanied by a spectacular slideshow of newly commissioned images of the town and surrounding landscape by local filmmaker Colin Aldred. In the foyer before the concert, Hindoyan had directed a flashmob performance by an ensemble from the orchestra of Fanfare in Furness by Ian Stephens, another commission for the occasion; the previous afternoon he had visited one of the town’s primary schools to meet some of the children with whom the orchestra will be working in the next few years of this wide-ranging residency, which will also involve health care agencies, community groups and arts organisations.

Photographs commissioned from local filmmaker Colin Aldred 'helped to give the opening concert some relevance and connection to Barrow’© Clare Stevens

In the audience that evening in Barrow was Darren Henley, chief executive of Arts Council England (ACE), which is supporting the initiative in partnership with the orchestra and Westmorland & Furness Council. This is the other side of the controversy that has been raging since ACE announced its decision to remove English National Opera from its National Portfolio of Funded Organisations in November 2022… Barrow is one of ACE’s ‘Priority Places for investment’ and the residency is billed as being part of its Let’s Create strategy, aimed at enabling everyone ‘to have access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences wherever they live’.

People in Barrow live at the western extremity of a peninsula on the north side of Morecambe Bay, reached by 50 miles of winding A-road from the M6 or by a stunningly beautiful railway line that offers views of river estuaries in one direction and the mountains of the Lake District in the other. The train passes through the grounds of Furness Abbey, now a dramatic red sandstone ruin, but for centuries the main driver of the local agricultural economy.

The peninsula was transformed in the mid-19th century, when the arrival of the Furness Railway and the dredging of the channel between the main coastline and Walney Island were catalysts for industrial development. Within 40 years Barrow grew from a small village into a large town with docks, iron and steel works and a thriving shipyard. Today, the steel industry has disappeared, but shipbuilding still takes place; BAE Systems build Royal Navy submarines in the huge Devonshire Dock Hall that dominates every view towards the sea.

There is clearly employment in Barrow, so does it really need investment as part of a levelling-up agenda? Yes, I discovered at a reception for representatives of local arts organisations hosted by the RLPO the evening before their concert, because of its remoteness, and because the fortunes of the shipbuilding industry ebb and flow. Even when it’s doing well, as it is at the moment, people aren’t in the habit of spending money on cultural activities.

That said, it was evident that the area is full of creative people – visual artists, sculptors, writers, filmmakers and musicians. Music education suffers from the geographical challenges of being at the southern tip of the mountainous Lake District, far from the relevant hub’s base in Carlisle, and there is a huge need for more Early Years provision, but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Music in Secondary Schools charity is working in the local secondary school, and singer and conductor Deborah Milledge has recently set up the North West Music Academy in a former bank in the town centre to offer lessons and performances in all genres.

The RLPO rehearses in The Forum ahead of the first concert of its new residency © Clare Stevens

The RLPO has prepared the ground carefully for its residency, making contact with local stakeholders and involving them in the process. ‘That’s how we discovered Colin Aldred, and commissioned his collage of slow-moving images that accompanied the Beethoven and helped to give the opening concert some relevance and connection to Barrow,’ says the orchestra’s artistic planning director Sandra Parr. Strong images of buildings, architecture and structure contrast with pastoral scenes of Walney Island, big landscapes and seascapes. Aldred tells me that he found the process immensely rewarding and exciting, but also challenging, as fitting images to pre-existing music that would be performed live was a reversal of his usual process, where music is chosen to fit his films. The result was wonderfully evocative and successful.

Partners in the residency include The Forum, where staff have been enthusiastic about the project. ‘From the minute [the RLPO team] walked in the door, I could tell that we were going to be able to work together,’ says Joanne Marwood, the venue’s events and marketing manager. ‘I was absolutely thrilled when they phoned to say their ACE bid had been successful.’ And at a time when city and county councils around the country are cutting arts budgets altogether, it was heartening to hear councillor Virginia Taylor, cabinet member for Sustainable Communities and Localities at Westmorland and Furness Council, demonstrating huge commitment to the council’s support for the residency and to the value of live music in a stirring speech after the concert, when audience and performers alike flocked into the foyer of the Forum for cake, champagne and a chance to meet the RLPO players and management team.

Also at the reception was contralto Jess Dandy, who grew up in Barrow; her parents’ furniture shop is a stone’s throw from the Forum. She shared Taylor’s excitement about hearing a professional symphony orchestra concert in her own town, a revelation in a place where, she says, ‘we were often made to feel that classical music was not for the likes of us’.

Domingo Hindoyan: ‘Our passion for music is at the heart of every one of our concerts,' © Clare Stevens

Domingo Hindoyan was trained in the Sistema system and says he knows no other way of working with an orchestra than by embedding itself in its community. The first thing he did on his arrival in Barrow on concert weekend was to meet some local primary schoolchildren and their teachers. ‘You cannot imagine how I enjoyed seeing the curiosity in their eyes about what is a conductor, what is an orchestra, what does it sound like. For me this is a big hint of hope for the future, and it is up to us to develop it more.’ The residency will include a youth programme that will grow every year, working with teachers across Barrow to enrich music education through workshops and live performances in schools.

Future concerts include chamber performances by RLPO principals in smaller venues such as the Town Hall (sold out) and St Mary’s Church, and Hindoyan returns for a programme of Rossini, Tchaikovsky and Bizet in the Forum in June; tickets are selling fast. Barrow Library will host a sold-out dementia-friendly concert and a performance for under-5s, and April sees the launch of a Liverpool Philharmonic Listening Club with a conversation between Parr, conductor Andrew Manze and composer Andrew Deakin, programme director of Barrow’s sound art and music organisation Full of Noises.

‘Our passion for music is at the heart of every one of our concerts,’ says Hindoyan, ‘and we can’t wait to share this with everyone in Barrow over the next three years and, we hope, beyond.’