Latest news with #BritsWeek
The Independent
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Behind the scenes of Brits Week for War Child's live shows
The 2025 Brits Week for War Child performances are underway, with stars including Rachel Chinouriri, Joy Crookes, Cat Burns, Frank Turner and Kasabian performing intimate, sold-out shows ahead of the Brit Awards on Saturday 1 March. Proceeds from the 11 shows are going towards War Child's efforts to help provide protection, education and mental health support by children affected by war. The organisation began putting on performances ahead of the annual ceremony around 2009, with their record-breaking double headline show of Coldplay and The Killers taking place at Shepherd's Bush Empire in London. War Child then officially teamed up with the Brit Awards in 2019, in partnership with AEG Presents, to deliver what is now known as Brits Week. The Independent spoke with Clare Sanders-Wright, Live Music Lead at War Child UK, to learn more about the work that goes into the shows each year. How has the Brit Awards partnership evolved over the years and how has it helped raise awareness for War Child? The relationship between War Child and the BRIT Awards has flourished since we began working together, and evolved into our annual BRITs Week shows. The biggest names in music have lent their support over the years, and BRITs Week has become a staple in the music industry's calendar, ultimately raising awareness of our work as well as millions of pounds, that have truly changed the lives of children caught in wars they didn't start around the world. Since the inception of BRITs Week for War Child, the awareness raised by the BRIT Awards as well as the amazing artists and their teams who have donated their time and talents has seen music fans help raise over £7m to support the children we work with. Our local teams are in communities and refugee camps around the world, creating safe spaces for children to play, learn and access mental health support, as well as delivering immediate emergency aid in crisis situations, and this money has been integral to facilitating our continued work. Why is War Child still relevant today — could you detail some of the work the organisation has been involved in in the past year? War Child is more relevant today than ever before. It's never been more deadly to be a child, with an estimated one in five children living in or fleeing from conflict globally. Together with our partners, War Child delivers vital work in 14 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, all with our ultimate mission in mind – ensuring a safe future for every child affected by war. In the past year, a huge focus for the time has been on the children affected by the conflict in Gaza. While a ceasefire has been announced, this is only the first step, and children will need specialist support to process the trauma they've experienced. War Child and our partners have stepped in to provide life-saving assistance, having reached more than 180,000 individuals, including upwards of 118,000 children – over 1 in 10 children in Gaza. This includes mental health and psychosocial support activities, and emergency provisions such as food, clean water, hygiene kits, warm clothing, and blankets. War Child is also working to help address the needs of the estimated 17,000 unaccompanied and separated children in Gaza, many of whom have had their immediate family members killed. So far, over 580 of these children have been directly supported by War Child, with efforts ongoing to connect them with essential services and caregivers. Our work has continued to span the globe, however. For example, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, 120,000 children have been displaced in 2025 alone, on top of the hundreds of thousands already displaced. Our teams have reached more than 227,000 people in the region so far with our emergency response, and supported more than 1,500 children with catch up classes through 2024. What is the organisation's hopes for this year's Brits Week shows? Awareness of our work. We've seen time and again that the artists we invite to play BRITs Week have fan bases that really care about the issues we work on. The goal is to give music lovers information about these crises around the world, what exactly it is that we do to support children caught in the middle of them, and ultimately, encourage them to engage and support us at and through these shows. I think artists love to see how engaged their fans are, and how much they care just as much as we do. So, while we obviously want to raise as much desperately needed funds as possible to support our work, we hope more people become aware of who we are, what we do, and are empowered to get involved however they can. We're also really happy this year to be taking our shows outside of London and hope to see this expand year on year. You can find more information on Brits Week for War Child 25 and the ongoing shows here. The 2025 Brit Awards take place on Saturday 1 March at the O2 Arena in London.
Telegraph
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Rachel Chinouriri: No wonder Adele wants to champion this brilliant young talent
The tears arrived over halfway into the show, when Rachel Chinouriri introduced a song she wrote as a teenager at the Brit School, unconvinced she'd ever make it. But the 26-year-old British singer-songwriter wasn't crying about the unrequited childhood crush commemorated in its lyrics. The song – an early hit called So My Darling – has taken on a whole new level of emotion after Chinouriri was nominated for Best New Artist and Artist of the Year at this year's Brit Awards. She's finally getting her flowers, quite literally: after the nominations were announced last month, fellow alumnus Adele sent her an enormous bunch of pastel pink roses. The heartwarming lore, the intimate 350-capacity venue, the buzzy crowd: would Thursday's show at London's Omeara one day become an 'I was there' moment? It certainly felt possible. If she's on the cusp of something big, she's ready for it: a balletic star with the same earnest, self-assured charisma possessed by Adele and Raye. Is 'make the audience immediately want to be your friend' a class they teach at the Brit School? This gig took place as part of Brits Week in aid of the charity War Child, a cause that is close to Chinouriri's heart (her parents were child soldiers in 1970s Zimbabwe). Watching Chinouriri perform leaves you baffled by the major label executives who constantly attempted to pigeonhole her as soul or RnB – a situation so frustrating she published an open letter about it in 2022. 'Black artists doing indie is not confusing,' she wrote. 'You see my colour before you hear my music.' Chinouriri comes from a disgracefully short line of Black female indie artists: when she was writing those early songs at school, she might have been inspired by 2000s artists such as Shingai Shoniwa of rock band Noisettes and VV Brown, and more recently encouraged by the success of Mercury Prize winners English Teacher and their frontwoman Lily Fontaine. But the list isn't long. Live, Chinouriri makes total sense, her songs and voice bigger and punchier than her 2024 debut album What A Devastating Turn Of Events would have you believe. Second song Cold Call crashed open like Gossip's Standing In The Way Of Control or early Arctic Monkeys. Widespread head-banging accompanied My Everything, while My Blood evoked the intensity of a Cranberries song and closer Never Need Me the peppy fun of Olivia Rodrigo. Chinouriri may have sung quietly while practising at home as a teenager, so as not to annoy her parents: no trace of that on stage at Omeara, where she generated more energy than the room was able to contain. Chinouriri operates at the poppier end of indie: Dumb B**** Juice and It Is What It Is, the entire room two-stepping to the latter, were welcome nods to Lily Allen's tongue-in-cheek and very London brand of pop, and Chinouriri will support Sabrina Carpenter on tour next month. But she truly flourished during squally number The Hills (written during a lonely stint in Los Angeles), yelling 'when you don't belong' into the mic. She certainly belongs here, a Black British artist, uninhibited and brilliant, on stages that are about to get a whole lot bigger.
