Outreach

The Composer-in-Residence programme was a key strand of the 17th Walled City Music Festival 2026, led by acclaimed composer Gráinne Mulvey. Five emerging composers took part in an intensive programme of collaboration, developing new work in close partnership with festival artists. Their compositions were workshopped, performed and brought to life by Sabrina Hu (flute), David O’Doherty (viola) and Clíona Doris (harp), offering a valuable platform for new voices and reinforcing the festival’s commitment to supporting creativity and contemporary music.

Outreach remained a central part of the 17th Walled City Music Festival 2026, with world-class artists engaging directly with students across the North West. Pupils from St Mary’s College, St Cecilia’s College, St Columb’s College and Lumen Christi College experienced live performances and Q&A sessions with Cathal Breslin, while students at Ulster University Magee met both Cathal and Martina Filjak. These sessions offered valuable insight into life as a professional musician, inspiring young people and strengthening the festival’s connection with its local community.

We brought stacks of saxophones together for a sax celebration led by two of the world’s finest saxophone artists, Derry-born Gerard Mc Chrystal and Christopher Creviston (USA) as part of the 2025 Walled City Music Festival.

Players grade 5 or above got involved in a fun, showstopping staxophones performance right in the middle of Foyleside Shopping Centre, performing hits by James Brown, Abba, Coldplay and more.

The 2025 Walled City Music Festival invited 6 composers to create new works and participate in a workshop led by Composer-in-Residence Linda Buckley with saxophonists Gerard McChrystal and Christopher Creviston.

Find out more here.

We support newly commissioned work which takes visiting musicians into primary schools, care homes and hospital settings, especially where these are in areas of social and economic deprivation.

Each festival features a series of Big Sing workshops, entertaining mass participation events for schools, families and adult singers led by skilled facilitators.

We also take choirs out into hospitals, care homes, special schools, shopping centres, community centres and public spaces so that group singing can be seen, heard and enjoyed, free of charge.

Visiting post graduate students perform and give tuition at secondary schools across the city.

Since 2015, WCM has partnered with Ulster University on Inclusive Creativity, a programme that enables musicians with a disability to perform alongside professional performers on a level playing field.

Projects have included an international tour to London, Dublin and Lisbon, by the Derry-based group Acoustronic, whose members are young musicians with a disability.

In 2020 WCM commissioned composer Frank Lyons to write a new work for Acoustronic and the Ulster Orchestra, which was premiered later in 2021.