A choir that won this year’s Britain’s Got Talent is donating £50,000 of its prize money to help farmers.
The Hawkstone Farmers Choir will officially hand over the donation to five charities supporting farming, mental health, and rural communities at an event held at Jeremy Clarkson’s pub, The Farmer’s Dog, near Burford on Friday.
The donation from the choir – which was set up by the TV presenter to support farmers with their mental health – marks the first charitable donation from their £250,000 Britain’s Got Talent prize money.
Clarkson’s alcohol brand Hawkstone is matching the donation pound-for-pound, bringing the total contribution to £100,000.
The choir’s £50,000 will be shared equally between Mind, RABI, the Farming Community Network (FCN), Shout, and the DPJ Foundation, with Hawkstone’s matching £50,000 used to extend its partnership with Shout.
It said the remainder of the prize money has been used to establish and develop the choir as a sustainable organisation, with the ambition that future success will enable further ongoing donations to agricultural charities.
Victoria Hornby, CEO of Mental Health Innovations which manages Shout, said: “We are enormously grateful to the Hawkstone Farmers’ Choir for sharing their Britain’s Got Talent prize money with us.
“We know mental health is an issue the choir cares deeply about.
“Choir members have spoken openly about their own mental health, about the pressures farmers are under and about what singing together has meant to them.
“That they chose to put their winnings behind our work means a great deal to us.”