The Northern A Cappella Festival 2027

Aim

We are currently the only a cappella festival in the UK and aim to bring the culture of ensemble meeting and musicking together back home!

We founded in 2026 and looking at bigger European festivals like the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival funded by Bernstein or the Leipzig A Cappella Festival. It seemed to us that in the UK there is a lot of choir singing and ensemble singing - maybe especially in Liverpool but the festivals there are are often exclusively liturgical.

We seemed to hit a nerve in our first incarnation with many ensembles asking to participate and with us being able to produce a fantastic line up.

As we cannot compete with the funding which European festivals have, we rely on your generosity and on the musicians to come over and produce a fantastic concert in the end for free, because they love the platform they get on the day.

Therefore, we have peer to peer workshops on the day and select the ensembles to be as diverse as possible ranging through all the broad spectrum of a cappella music - from classics and liturgy to Jazz, folk tunes and the various blends of national culture and a cappella from Norwegian sheep calling to African beats. 

We might even have a world star of a cappella coming over to give a guest talk on how to build an ensemble and a career in this highly competitive and rewarding music genre.

The costs we aim to cover with this crowdfunding is more or less only funding allowing our international groups to travel to the UK without being wildly out of pocket.

We also work together with schools and train school choirs individually.


We therefore have three funding aims:

A) Pay the venue and staff (videographer, recording artists, photographers, etc.)

B) Travel bursaries for a six person mixed internationally renowned cross over group from Germany doing Pop, Jazz and more classical music (most of their music being self arranged and composed)

C) Travel bursaries for a six man a cappella group from South Africa with two grammy nominations in their pockets mixing their local music with a cappella, Jazz and even Anglican church music. Most of their music is self written.

D) Anything over will go to start fund the 2028 project. 

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 3rd January 2027 at 12:00pm