Retuned music festival follows Dartington theme but faces financial challenge
The Dartington summer school is dead. Long live the Dartington summer school – in exile.
That could be the slogan for the new version of the internationally renowned music school and festival that took place for more than 70 years at Dartington Hall – and which in 2024 moved 300 miles away to Norfolk.
The change happened after Dartington Hall Trust – the charity running the Dartington estate outside Totnes – two years ago closed the annual event on cost grounds. That prompted a separate charity that had previously worked with Dartington on the festival to start a remodelled summer school – based on a similar template and involving many of the same people – in the small Norfolk town of Holt.
Now, after two iterations of the restyled operation, the most recent of which finished in August, festival director Richard Heason says: “This is very much a long-term project. We feel we have an opportunity to grow [over the next few years ] and continue the festival’s ethos.” For his plans to work out however Heason must find a way to narrow the currently large gap between the event’s expenses and income. While the venture’s hefty deficits have so far been plugged successfully, this favourable position is unlikely to last for much longer.
Heason’s own connection with Dartington started in 1989 when as a promising music student he was invited to conduct one of the orchestras associated with the estate, two years later attending the summer school for the first time and then returning often as a volunteer. The summer school’s history dates to 1948 when it was started in Dorset by the eminent music administrator William Glock.
After gaining the support of Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, the wealthy benefactors behind Dartington, the operation moved to Devon in 1953, becoming a key part of the UK musical calendar. Luminaries associated with the school have ranged from classical behemoths such as Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten to the Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar and folk legend Martin Carthy.
Normally lasting four weeks the summer school has spread its focus beyond classical music to span a range of musical genres, including jazz and composition and conducting skills. It has offered bursaries to young musicians given the chance to learn from top international performers.
The Summer School Foundation – the charity behind the restyled enterprise and which until 2024 was called the Dartington International Summer School Foundation – was set up in 1976 to run the Dartington activity. Having done this job until about 1990 when the Dartington trust took over, the foundation has continued to play a supporting role, helping with costs and promotion, until 2024 when it was back in the driving seat once more. Heason joined the foundation as a trustee in 2014 and from 2017 to 2023 was its chair.
Now – as he plans the next two-week Holt festival next summer – he faces big financial challenges. In each of its first two iterations the remodelled enterprise made a loss of about £100,000. The foundation’s latest annual report helpfully provides a breakdown of 2024 event’s finances. In both 2024 and 2025 the deficits have been financed from the foundation’s reserves, built up over the years mainly from grants, legacies and investment income, and which after these big cash calls now stand at only about £100,000.
Next year’s summer school is almost certain to make a loss that again will be met from the foundation’s reserves. Heason and his small team of helpers must cut this deficit substantially to avoid the charity running out of money – an event likely to mean the festival finally comes to an end. While he doesn’t want to spell out his plans, Heason is reasonably confident that he can trim the losses. “With the experience behind us of two festivals, we have a better knowledge about how the event works. We think we can bring in new funds [such as through donations and grants] as well as increasing the number of paying participants.”
Both Heason and the foundation – whose trustees include several people with deep experience of Dartington – have used their previous experience of summer schools in planning this and last year’s event. The current chair of the foundation is Lisa Tregale, a former administrator of the summer school at Dartington and who is now director of the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales. Tregale says that so far the re-engineered festival has been “a great success”.
Also supporting Heason has been Gavin Henderson, artistic director of the summer school between 1985 to 2010, and who attended for several days of this year’s festival. Steve Dummer – a livewire clarinet player and educator who has been part of many festivals at Dartington and who played a big part at Holt this year – has been a foundation trustee since 2018. Among the musicians who over the years have been regular attenders at Dartington, and who featured in the latest Holt offering, were the conductors Andrew Griffiths and Steven Devine, soprano Sarah Gabriel and the City Musick wind band.
According to Heason’s estimates some 75 per cent of the 400 or so participants in this year’s festival –including those travelling from Devon, with about a quarter from overseas – had been introduced to the event by a previous attendance at Dartington. Of this total about 250 paid for courses in various forms of music while also had the chance to take part in performances and attend concerts by visiting top musicians in a range of genres.
The other 150 or so comprised a mix of volunteers, music students and professional artists who filled the ranks of orchestras and smaller ensembles. “Dartington is a special place that’s impossible to replicate,” said one long-time former Dartington summer school festival participant who was in Holt. “But I’m glad the festival has found a way to continue. I’m pleased to be here.”
For next year’s festival, one South Devon-based music enthusiast is discussing organising a coach to transport people from the Totnes area to the new site, which is at Gresham’s School, a wealthy boarding school with extensive music facilities plus about 350 beds (normally used by pupils) that can be used to accommodate other people outside term times. By contrast, at the time trust shut down the summer school in Dartington, the estate could offer only about 140 beds, a much lower number than in the past, with the reduction linked to the deterioration in the buildings on the estate over the past 20 years as a result of financial problems.
Having space for “a few hundred” people to live on the site while the festival takes place is vital, Heason says, both to make the event economically viable and to create the necessary environment for a positive experience. “For a festival of this sort to work you need critical mass,” Heason says. “Just 30 or 40 people isn’t enough.”
Another key factor he says is the mix of people. “The aspiration at the summer school has always been to have a community of different sorts of individuals who can exchange ideas and develop their musical experiences. The festival must not just give people a good time but provide a cultural and educational element.”
While the foundation has proceeded with its new version of the summer school, the Dartington trust organised in both 2024 and 2025 a much more modest music event on the estate – a week-long summer singing workshop called ChoralFest catering for a relatively small number of people. Last year’s ChoralFest attracted 75 people. The trust declined to say how many took part this year. It said that in both years the event “broke even” but it was too early to say if it will run the activity again.
Looking ahead, assuming Dartington as a whole can start to generate a surplus across all its activities – something the trust hopes will happen after a long period of annual losses followed by recent sweeping changes – the trust says it will again “consider subsidising worthwhile arts/ culture events that can’t cover their costs”.
Reviewing the Dartington links, Heason says that while he and many other music lovers “hold our time at Dartington very close to our hearts” it is time to move on. “With the changes that have taken place over recent years at Dartington, the summer school as we know it isn’t viable on the Dartington estate. It requires a different combination of spaces and resources to flourish….and we believe we have found these in Norfolk.”