Continuo Connect: Helping Early Music Flourish in the UK
Impact Report - July 2026
What is Continuo Connect?
Continuo Foundation exists to help musicians build financially sustainable careers and to bring inspiring live Early Music – medieval, baroque, classical and romantic repertoire performed on the period instruments for which it was composed – to people in communities across the UK. Since 2021 the Foundation has awarded £1.18 million in grants to 285 projects, supporting nearly 1,500 musicians and enabling 817 concerts in 265 locations, reaching live and digital audiences of more than 436,000.
Continuo Connect (“CC”) is the digital platform that completes this mission. In little more than three years, CC has transformed a fragmented sector into a visible, connected and discoverable community, linking audiences, promoters and artists in a way that did not exist before. Audiences now have one place to discover Early Music concerts, artists, composers and venues. In turn, promoters and artists gain a powerful new shop window. CC contributes directly to the long-term financial sustainability of the Early Music sector by growing audiences, concert attendance and artists’ incomes, while instilling a deeper appreciation of the music, the research underpinning it, and the sense of a connected sector.
Continuo Connect - Impact at a glance
5,000 subscribers
Newsletter audience grew 2x since March 2025
~65% open rate
Well above the typical arts newsletter benchmark of 44% (Source: Mailchimp)
93,000 site visitors
Unique visitors in the past year
4,300 concerts
Listed to date, with nearly 400 concerts live
300 artist profiles
Plus 110 festival profiles and 345 features published
1.3m CC post views
Social media reach
How CC has been growing audiences – and the impact of each channel
1. The newsletter: a loyal, growing community of Early Music supporters
Our fortnightly newsletter is the platform’s strongest engagement tool. Its audience has more than doubled since March 2025 to over 5,000 subscribers, with an average open rate of around 65% — well above the arts-sector benchmark - demonstrating strong reader engagement. Newsletter-driven visits to the site have doubled year on year, and readers take meaningful action — following artists, exploring features and clicking through to book tickets — on nearly half of their visits, making it the most reliable engagement channel. Over 400 featured inclusions have introduced artists, festivals and concerts to engaged audiences who might not otherwise have discovered them.
2. The platform itself: boosting artist and concert discovery at national scale
The website welcomed over 93,000 unique visitors in the past year, with over 10,000 visits in June 2026, 43% higher than in June 2025. Crucially, that discovery drives real bookings: in May 2026 alone, audiences clicked through toward tickets for 320 different upcoming concerts, with 84% of that activity spread across the breadth of the catalogue rather than a handful of flagship events. Numerous promoters have confirmed that this activity is converting into ticket sales, with income reaching artists and ensembles right across the platform — not just its biggest names, levelling the playing field for smaller and emerging groups.
3. Social media: putting artists in front of new audiences
With 1.3 million CC social media post views in the past year, and significant follower growth on Instagram and Facebook, our social channels extend artists' visibility far beyond their existing audiences. As with CC’s audience growth overall, this reach has been achieved almost entirely organically; paid promotion is a recent – and deliberately modest – supplement. Where we have used it, carefully targeted campaigns are exceptionally efficient: a paid video ad campaign in May and June 2026 brought in 400 additional newsletter subscribers at an average cost of just £0.76 per sign-up. The data shows that these arrivals are among our most engaged visitors, similar to our newsletter subscribers. The ad campaigns have also enabled CC to tap into new audiences with adjacent cultural interests such as architecture, heritage and history, offering the opportunity to discover the music that accompanies and enriches them.
4. Partnerships and editorial: building the sector's shared home
CC showcases the profiles of 300 ensembles and solo artists, 110 festivals and concert series. Building relationships with these organisations, including partnerships with major festivals such as the Oxford Festival of the Arts, Buxton International Festival and York Early Music Festival, has been an effective means of both spreading the word about CC and connecting Continuo grantees directly with promoters and festival audiences. CC is also the repository of 350 features and interviews, 150 of which were added in the last year. This archive is a permanent record of the UK's historical performance scene and the music heritage it preserves and furthers.
Reaching the whole country
Audience demand for Early Music performances is nationwide – and CC’s audience has been built almost entirely organically. Our small team, without any paid advertising beyond a handful of recent Facebook campaigns, has grown a user base that reaches every corner of the country. The heatmap above (left) shows where CC’s website visitors were located: engagement extends across virtually all of England and Wales and reaches well into Scotland and Northern Ireland. The concentrations around London, the South East and the Midlands reflect population density – but the breadth of coverage is extensive.
The map of upcoming concerts (right) tells an equally important story: much of this music was already being performed across the country but was under the radar – scattered across local websites, parish noticeboards and individual mailing lists, invisible to all but those who already knew where to look. CC has inspired the people who stage these concerts – promoters, festivals and the ensembles themselves – to list them on the CC platform. With nearly 400 concerts currently live, a concert goer in most areas of the UK can now find high-quality, affordable Early Music near them. CC is connecting audiences and artists across the whole country, furthering Continuo's mission to give everyone in the UK the opportunity to engage with live music, wherever they are, and to help Early Music flourish.
Appendix: Stakeholder and Audience Feedback
Stakeholder Feedback
“Continuo Connect has really changed the face of Early Music and brought people together, which creates this hub, this community.”
— Heidi Fardell, founder of Sounds Historical and Banbury Early Music Festival
“When programming the Brighton Early Music Festival for next year, we scanned Continuo Connect's Artists A-Z directory to inspire ideas and to choose who we would approach.”
— Olwen Foulkes, founder of Ensemble Augelletti and Artistic Director of Brighton Early Music Festival
Audience Feedback — Subscriber Survey 2025
Selected responses from the Continuo Connect 2025 subscriber survey. Quotes are grouped by theme; locations are as provided by respondents.
Discovery and Real-World Impact
“This is such a useful resource. I have discovered concerts by fantastic artists who were new to me via the concerts listing, and there is no way I would have found them without Continuo Connect - thank you so much”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Saffron Walden
“I don't typically click on recording features but after discovering the superb Bellot Ensemble and re-playing their recording to other people, that (atypically) became multiple times per week. I think everything Continuo does is brilliant and so valuable for the field.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Worcester
“Very happy with being able to access info on my preferred period of music. You enabled me to discover a festival nearby that I'd never known about.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Dorchester
“I love it, as living in Chorley, Lancs, I struggle to find concerts that are baroque only. I am looking forward to arranging more short breaks around concerts I find on the site.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Chorley, Lancashire
“Keep it coming, it's great to find out what events are happening in Scotland.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Kirkcaldy, Scotland
“It's brilliant! Good for hearing about concerts and performers I would not otherwise know about.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Cricklewood, London
Value to the Early Music Community
“Thank you. It's a valuable resource and I know from artists that the foundation funding for them is also hugely appreciated.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Liskeard, Cornwall
“Just to say thanks for bringing Early Music and Baroque music to a wider audience.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Manchester
“It's good and I think it fills a useful gap.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Chichester
“An important service for early music fans!”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Chorley, Lancashire
“You are fantastically important”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, West Ealing, London
What Continuo Connect Means to Subscribers
“Please, please keep doing it! It has improved my life....”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Stoke Newington, London
“I am more grateful to you than I can say! Please carry on your excellent work, and I'm very happy with the way you do things.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Hornsey / Crouch End, London
“Thank you for the best website/newsletter for Baroque-aholics!”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Oxford
The Newsletter and Website
“I think the newsletter is fantastic, very informative and interesting read which often prompts me to visit the website”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, New Cross, London
“I love this site. I am discovering so much.”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Selby, North Yorkshire
“It's an excellent resource and will only get better over time as it becomes better-known / more established. Congratulations to all concerned - I am very grateful it exists!”
— Continuo Connect subscriber, Evesham
Case Study
Bellot Ensemble
Bellot Ensemble’s journey from being founded in 2023 to achieving national recognition as BBC New Generation Baroque Ensemble in 2025 demonstrates the combined impact of Continuo Foundation grant funding, enabling the group to realise ambitious creative projects at a formative point in its development, and the sustained visibility across the Early Music sector and the wider digital realm provided through Continuo Connect.
Bellot Ensemble is a period-instrument group founded in 2023, at a challenging moment for the UK’s early music sector. Emerging in the aftermath of the pandemic, the ensemble set out to bring 17th-century repertoire to life through historically informed performance, imaginative programming and a distinctive approach to creative interpretation.
Continuo Foundation’s first grant award to Bellot Ensemble in 2024 supported the group’s debut album, Cupid’s Ground Bass, released on First Hand Records in November 2025. Exploring the expressive world of 17th-century Italian love arias, the recording showcases Bellot’s flair for ornamentation, improvisation and vivid musical storytelling.
A second Continuo award supported a companion film project: four staged videos of selected tracks from the album, directed by Thomas Guthrie. These films allowed Bellot to extend the reach of the recording, presenting the repertoire in a striking visual format designed for digital audiences. By combining high-quality performance with imaginative staging, the project gave the ensemble a powerful way to share its work beyond the stage.
Alongside grant funding, Continuo’s digital Early Music platform, Continuo Connect, provided Bellot with a valuable route to wider visibility. Through the ensemble’s profile page, concert listings, news coverage, feature interviews, video features, social media promotion and newsletter inclusions, Bellot’s work was brought to the attention of audiences, promoters, festivals and the wider Early Music sector.
Bellot Ensemble on Continuo Connect
29
concerts
promoted
10
features*
published
12
newsletter
inclusions
* Recording profile, interviews, videos, news
This increased visibility helped Bellot reach new audiences and build relationships within the sector. In 2025 the group secured a concert from a promoter in Lincoln via Continuo Connect, and their successful appearance in the Continuo Emerging Ensemble Showcase at the 2025 Oxford Early Music Day, co-presented with the Oxford Festival of the Arts, led to an invitation to return for a prominent slot in the 2026 Festival.
‘Continuo’s support has made a real difference to Bellot Ensemble at a crucial stage in our development. It helped us bring our debut album and film project to life, and gave us the freedom to present this repertoire with the level of care, imagination and ambition we aim for in everything we do.’Bellot Ensemble
National Recognition
Following on from the release of Bellot’s debut album, the group was selected as the BBC New Generation Baroque Ensemble (2025–27) and as a Britten Pears Young Artist (2025–26), two of the UK’s most prestigious development platforms for early-career musicians. This national recognition is a testament to the ensemble’s artistry, ambition and hard work, enabled by targeted early-stage support. These selections also confirm the expert judgement of Continuo Foundation’s Advisory Panel, which recognised the group’s potential just one year into their existence, simply based on a 10-minute video.