Taking Part in Celebration

Celebration is a vibrant annual festival held at Snape Maltings Concert Hall which showcases the diverse music being made by young people across Suffolk.

Each year Celebration brings together over 1,200 performers from schools and youth community groups form across the county. Each evening if different and audiences can expect to hear every kind of music imaginable – every genre, all ages, and abilities are welcome!

Key Dates:

Friday 14 February – Applications closed
Friday 14 March – All applicants will be notified
Wednesday 14 May – Twilight CPD session at Snape Maltings for group leaders / teachers
Monday 7 – Saturday 12 July – Celebration 2025

Book tickets for Celebration 2025

For any enquiries, please email the team celebration@brittenpearsarts.org

Celebration is kindly sponsored by James White Drinks.

Image gallery

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Small boy wearing a green sweatshirt singing and playing guitar.
Three young girls wearing colourful costumes and singing onstage.
Stage full of children wearing t-shirts in a range of colours and singing.
Man wearing a cap and hoodie playing drums with a group of schoolchildren.
Three older girls playing guitars onstage.
Boy wearing school uniform playing the violin.

Celebration 2024

Celebration 2023

Celebration 2022

Coming here today and seeing the reaction of the children when they first stood on the stage was fantastic. Celebration has been really special – from having their own dressing room to the fabulous band and singing with other schools.

Primary teacher

The Celebration evening was wonderfully organised, presenters spot on. I was so proud my son was part of this.

Parent and audience member

Celebration 2020

The theme for 2020’s Celebration was A Vision for the Future.

The performances took place just before lockdown. When rehearsing the finale, 2020 Vision by Emily Barden, the young people recorded messages of hope which played out during the performance. Some of their messages, such as “I’m excited to travel”, “I’m excited to see what 2020 might bring”, and “end racism”, were especially poignant given the events that followed.

In 2017, for the 30 year anniversary of the event we commissioned a finale from award-winning composer, lyricist and vocalist Gwyneth Herbert. Her lyrical content came from the present and future, asking each performer to make three wishes: one for themselves, one for someone they love and one for the world.