An overview of Feeney Commissions
The Feeney Trust has a 60-year history of supporting the creation of new works, to be premiered in Birmingham and to go on to reach audiences across the country and beyond.
The collection of scores held in the Special Collections at the University of Birmingham, demonstrates how Birmingham organisations such as CBSO have brought to life works of some of the most celebrated composers of the age - such as Sir Michael Tippett, Richard Rodney Bennett, John Joubert, Oliver Knussen.
At the start of the new millennium the Feeney Trust widened its commissioning policy to support choirs, opera, the CBSO's Youth Orchestra and Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Any artform
Widening its scope further, the Trust now supports new works created for public performance, exhibition or publication in Birmingham in any art form.
In 2017 we supported mac to commission one of Birmingham’s most celebrated photographers, Vanley Burke, in their “Beyond Windrush” Season. This new site-specific installation at mac – a collage of Caribbean migration and settlement “5000 Miles and 70 years” – marks his family’s relationship to the amazing history and contribution of the African Caribbean communities in Birmingham.
In 2018 we supported the CBSO commission of A Faithful Journey by Roxanna Panufnik, premiered in Birmingham. The piece complemented CBSO's education programme reaching Birmingham’s Polish communities.
Ambition
Whilst looking at a wider range of artforms, the Feeney Trust's commissions will aim to continue to make an outstanding contribution to Birmingham and the UK's cultural life.
We encourage applications that are bold and ambitious and can answer the simple questions – why this, why here, why now? We aim for these new works to add to the vital and vibrant Birmingham cultural scene – reflecting its contemporary dynamic and culturally diverse force that the city represents in the UK.
We welcome commissions that enable the opportunity to take an arts organisation into new creative territory and to encourage Birmingham audiences to explore and enjoy arts of exceptional quality.
For a more detailed history see History of the Feeney Commissions.