As we welcome the new year and look forward to another exciting year for the IWSO, I would like to introduce IWSO‘s outreach program which has been very dear to us from the beginning – ‘No Strings Attached’.

As a community orchestra, we are committed to making classical music available to our Westside community through affordable and accessible performances, and contributing to community wellbeing through shared live musical experiences.

The simple concept of ‘No Strings Attached’ is, well…that there are no strings attached. We believe in making music accessible without ask or obligation.

For our first two large scale concerts in April 2024, we invited local community groups to attend our concerts on a complimentary basis. We focused on groups within the Maribyrnong and Hobson’s Bay municipality initially due to the local proximity to our performance venue Williamstown Town Hall. We were excited to welcome several community groups from Altona, Kingsville and Seddon, making up around 6-8% of our concertgoers.

I spoke with a few of these concertgoers doing the interval – for many, this was their first time attending a live orchestral performance, or a rare musical outing within their local western municipality without having to traveI to the CBD or South East areas. I also had a memorable conversation with a community member around the nostalgia of returning to Williamstown Town Hall, since swing dancing there many decades ago!

As an unfunded non-for-profit organisation, we have been exploring avenues in 2024 to allow us to sustain this offering and the opportunity to expand our outreach program going forward.

In October 2024, we were delighted to receive a starting community grant from Community Bank Seddon Bendigo Bank. This grant has enabled us to increase our complimentary community ticket offering to around 10% of total concertgoers for our Nov 2024 & upcoming Children’s Concert on the 27th of April 2025.