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Making Matters: A Manchester project to repair and upcycle instruments

13 June 2025

The temporary workshop at Manchester Museum cr Charlotte Wellings

Helen Michetschläger reports on a project to repair old, damaged instruments so they can be used by Manchester schoolchildren, rather than just be thrown away

Olympias Music Foundation is a charity based in Manchester, UK, which offers free one-to-one instrumental lessons to the children of low-income families. A few months ago I met its chief executive Jo Yee Cheung, who told me it had been awarded a grant from the Oglesby Charitable Trust for a new initiative: Olympias Recycled Orchestra. This is a project to repair and upcycle instruments, rather than discarding them to landfill as soon as anything goes wrong. But the problem was, who will do the work? Many violin repairers are too busy to work on basic children’s instruments…

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