The National Youth Orchestra

So yeah.

And then, so after doing that, uh, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, uh, were up for playing the piece in 2011, and the last date of their mini tour was the BBC Proms.

So that's how that happened.

So for, for, for 25 minutes on, what came after, uh, BBC One or BBC Two, but for 25 minutes, there was just beat juggling on, on mainstream TV.

It was incredible.

Yeah, I had the privilege when I was young of playing both in the National Youth Orchestra and then in the European Youth Orchestra.

And what's amazing about both those orchestras is they're huge.

They're really big orchestras to allow lots of young people into them.

And I still vividly remember my first experience in the National Youth Orchestra of when we all came together for the first rehearsal.

You know, I was sitting at the end of the line of the oboes and we started and it was Dvorak's Carnival Overture.

And And we started and I was just like, I was kind of lifted off my seat because I just could not believe the sound that was happening there, that this was possible between all of these people.

Everything will be okay if I'm good."

She made it to become a star of the National Youth Orchestra, then at the age of 14 she started having extreme panic attacks on stage.

The adrenaline was just going and going and going.

Black spots just kind of came before my eyes.

And certainly in the UK, one of the biggest issues is class and social hierarchy.

And the parents who can afford to send their children to a school where you pay fees so that you get access to that extra enrichment of the arts and stuff, they are disproportionately represented, for example, in music departments at university or even in the National Youth Orchestra or the National Youth Choirs.

Whereas your average normal child who goes to your average normal state school where music and the arts and drama have been cut and cut and cut and cut have absolutely no access to it.

post age 12.

I was just thinking, so, so away from Avonmore, you've, you've had a long run on arts nonprofit boards.

So you had eight years on the National Youth Orchestra board, obviously c- presumably connected with your interest in music, and you sat on the three-person panel that appointed its new chair, 11 years as a trustee of the London Contemporary Orchestra, where you helped mediate the leadership issues.

I was just gonna ask you, what was the hardest situation, like governance situation? Uh, maybe you could think of an example that you had to navigate in either of those nonprofit board roles, and what did it teach you about board effectiveness in arts organizations more broadly and, you know, presumably taking this on to the National Portrait Gallery?

Yeah.