RLN

Britten Sinfonia Commits to Polish Partnership

Britten Sinfonia, whose offices are in Cambridge, features a collection of the country's most talented and creative musicians, many with solo and chamber music careers.It has a blossoming international profile and broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM.In autumn 2006 the ensemble began a series of lunchtime concerts in the East of England and Krakow, building on a relationship already established with the Malopolska region, by the East of England Regional Assembly and with funding from the Arts Council.It has just joined the Passport to Export scheme and is making the most of all the help and guidance offered by the government, through such organisations as the Regional Language Network.
Right from the start Britten Sinfonia has been committed to demonstrating respect and commitment to their counterparts in Poland, through learning their language.Three members of staff: the Orchestra Manager (Tom Shore), the Concerts Director (Naomi Faulkner) and the Marketing Manager (Chloe Priest) are learning Polish through the government’s Train to Gain scheme, which offers a 50% subsidy towards language training.

At the moment the group meets every fortnight for a three-hour session, along with another organisation from Luton, who travel to Britten Sinfonia’s offices in Cambridge.Naomi is impressed by the value for money.“Because we have the Train to Gain subsidy and because we split the cost between two organisations this works out at £5 per person per hour, so for three of us it’s £45 in total for three hours”.

“Our teacher is absolutely fantastic.He understands that we are all very busy people and that there’s little or no chance of us doing lots of homework, so he keeps it to a manageable level with plenty of necessary repetition! He not only focuses on language, but also teaches us about the culture and history of the country. He has taught us the vocabulary related to musical instruments, as well as restaurant vocabulary, which is very important when socialising and negotiating over dinner.We all feel much more confident about travelling to Poland, after just three sessions and feel we have made real progress.We can pick up certain words and although we cannot discuss very precise technical details about musical instruments and concerts, at least we can recognise when people are talking about them and this helps us enormously. On the practical side, our Orchestra Manager, who travels everywhere with the ensemble, found that having a few words and phrases at the ready helped with getting to and from the airport, sorting out rehearsals, booking taxis and that type of thing”.

“We can’t rate these lessons highly enough - it really has been excellent. None of us has the expectation that we will become fluent or suddenly be able to converse in Polish but even being able to speak those few little phrases before switching into English is very important as it shows respect and that we are trying to make a connection”.

Naomi gives a very concrete example of how training can directly benefit a company: “a couple of weeks ago a name came up, which our colleague had never known how to pronounce.This had caused some level of embarrassment in the past, and now that we have rigorously studied Polish pronunciation, he knows how to pronounce it - the relationship should run a lot more smoothly as a result. This is a small but crucially important thing”.

Naomi believes that learning in a small group with people from different organisations has been very beneficial, “there is a certain amount of competitiveness, which helps to drive us on yet the group is hugely supportive, and this creates a very positive environment.It is nice to spend time with people from outside our normal environment and we learn from each other”.

As well as language training, Britten Sinfonia attended the free RLN cultural workshop on Poland, which they found incredibly useful in providing a basic understanding of the culture and history of Poland.Naomi gives an example “we learnt that seniority, in terms of age is very important in Poland and age commands respect, which is not necessarily the case in the UK. We learnt where opportunities lie and where economic growth is centred”.

Naomi concludes: “All in all, it is important to think of our relationship with Malopolska as a partnership, whereby we learn from each other – and language is one of the keys to this”.