“At Nordoff and Robbins, we use music to transform lives across the UK. From a child with profound and complex learning disabilities finding their voice, to an adult with brain injury reconnecting with their family, music can be so powerful.

“We are delighted to partner with the Lord and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation and the Woosnam Foundation to improve the lives of children and adults with disabilities across Greater London and the home counties from April 2024 for three years. Through your generous joint commitment, in year 1 of our grant, our Health and Care Professions Council accredited music therapists have worked in 13 specialist schools and care settings in London to deliver a total of 3039 music therapy sessions, supporting 521 vulnerable children and adults to thrive and reach their potential.

“At this time of rising need and funding constraints your support makes a tremendous difference, ensuring children and adults at the sharpest end of need can access high quality music therapy to improve their social and emotional wellbeing while also benefiting their families, carers and staff. Thank you for all your support.”

Read the full report here.

“Thank you to the Trustees of The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation for their generous grant of £60,000 awarded in July 2019 towards the V&A’s delivery of three accessible learning and interpretation projects: Performances for families with interpretation for deaf audiences; Young people’s SEND programming development: Hospital Schools; and Accessible interpretation for V&A FuturePlan Projects. This report provides an overview of activities carried out over the past year and summarises the impact that the Foundation’s support helped us to achieve. 

“We remain extremely grateful to the Trustees for their longstanding support of the V&A and for pledging further support to this important programme for the next three years. We look forward to keeping you updated as the project develops.”

Read the full report here.

In October 2019, The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation awarded a grant of £50,000 to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) to create a new play garden at RHS Garden Wisley. The ‘Back to Nature Garden’ was part of a five-year transformational plan to address the barriers people may face in visiting Wisley. The new play garden was designed to address a clear need for a purpose-built play area to fit alongside the wider development at Wisley.

The grant from the Foundation has helped us to ensure that all children visiting Wisley can reconnect with nature and plants, and spend more time outdoors.

Read the full report here.

Early Birds is a sensory-friendly event organised by the Science Museum which has now been running for over 10 years. Designed for individuals who prefer not to visit the museum with the general public when the experience can be too overwhelming. It enables those with autism spectrum conditions or sensory processing differences. For example. to enjoy the museum in a quieter environment.

Read the full report here.

Having reached the final of our three years of support from The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation, we are able to reflect upon what has been an incredibly positive and productive period for our free and inclusive access programme. 

Read the full report here.

Awarded the Honour of

Order of the British Empire (OBE)

Philanthropist for Services to Medical Research and to the Arts

 

Photo © James Shaw/Shutterstock

We’re delighted to present you with an update from the Francis Crick Institute. Our dedicated researchers continue to push the frontiers of knowledge, helping to shape our fundamental understanding of human health and disease.

Read the full report here: Impact Report – November 2024.

Professor Roger Kirby MA MD FRCS (Urol)

Roger Kirby is the immediate past President of the Royal Society of Medicine. He was educated at Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire, St John’s College, Cambridge and the Middlesex Hospital, London. He qualified as a doctor with a distinction in surgery in 1975. He was appointed as a consultant to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1986, moving 10 years later to St George’s Hospital, London SW17. During the latter part of his 30-year NHS career he was awarded a Chair of Urology in 2001 and was Director of Postgraduate Medical Education. He created, and was Director of, a thriving Urology Research Unit at St George’s and pioneered one of the first courses on patient safety there.

Professor Kirby was among the first in the UK to introduce radical surgery for prostate cancer and minimally invasive treatments including robot-assisted prostate surgery. Among his many pioneering initiatives has been the creation of The Prostate Centre in Wimpole St.

Professor Kirby was founder and Chairman of the charity Prostate UK/Prostate Action for 13 years, and continues to serve as Vice-President for Prostate Cancer UK. He is also a founding member and now President of The Urology Foundation (TUF).

 

Edward Jackson

Edward has a wealth of City experience spanning law, investment banking and investment disciplines.

He is currently employed at Pictet Group, a Swiss private bank, where he is responsible for UK Real Estate Investments for the bank’s value-add and core+ property strategies. He joined Pictet in 2019 and has made a number of investments in logistics, residential and office sectors.

Prior to Pictet, he was a Vice President at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he worked for nine years in mergers & acquisitions, and debt and equity capital markets. He acted for public companies and private equity funds in real estate, consumer beverage, healthcare and media industries across Western Europe.

Edward previously trained and qualified as a corporate lawyer at Clifford Chance, and also worked at Taylor Wessing and Weil Gotshal. In his eight years’ experience as a lawyer, he worked in London, Tokyo and New York.

Edward has advised pro bono at Battersea Legal Advice Centre, and is currently a mentor for Fairfield Enterprise, a charity providing specialist careers coaching to undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds. Edward holds an LLB degree in Laws from University College London, and an MBA from INSEAD, where he was an IFS/Henry Grunfeld Scholar.

“We are delighted to present this report to Lady Wolfson and the Trustees of The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation and share the impact of the Dawnosaurs programme over the last year. Dawnosaurs is a series of free events for neurodivergent children (including autism, ADHD, Tourette’s, OCD and other sensory processing difficulties). Your generous gift of £100,000 over three years has allowed us to continue to welcome thousands of neurodivergent children to the Museum to enjoy everything we have to offer in a quiet, safe, accessible environment curated for their needs.”

Read the full report here.

“We’re excited to announce that we’re partnering with The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation and the Woosnam Foundation! With their generous support, we’ll be able to provide music therapy to hundreds of adults and children with disabilities across Greater London for the next three years. Thank you to both foundations for helping us continue to offer music therapy to those who need it most.”

Read more here.

“We are about to mark the first decade of a cherished programme: Early Birds and Night Owls. It offers special access, outside opening hours, to families who need a quieter environment, especially for children with some neurodiverse conditions such as autism or with sensory challenges. We could not afford to run this programme without philanthropic support and for ten years we have enjoyed that commitment from Estelle Wolfson. Sadly, Estelle couldn’t be with us this evening but we – and many families – are hugely grateful for her support.” 

This email from a mother is typical of families’ feedback on the experience:

“I came down from Oxford with my son and daughter who are autistic/ADHD and never want to do stuff together. It felt incredibly special to be in the museum after hours, and the quiet and low lights were lovely. We were blown away by the Power Up exhibition, which is the main reason I took my son (he is doing gaming at college, but otherwise never leaves the house). For a couple of hours our family got to relax and enjoy ourselves.”  

We believe that everyone can learn with the Wallace Collection. Our accessible events and resources engage people who need additional support to take part in our public programmes.

In 2023–24, thanks to the continued generosity of the Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation, we delivered 14 vibrant, bespoke events for D/deaf, blind and partially sighted, and neurodiverse audiences, reaching 172 participants.

With the knowledge and experience gained over years of access programme delivery funded by the Foundation, we have also improved the accessibility of our core offerings. More public events are now supported with accessible interpretation. We have ensured many of our headline talks have live captions for people who are D/deaf, and our audio-described events and online content support audiences who are blind or partially-sighted. 

Read the full report here.

Early Birds is a sensory-friendly event organised regularly by the Science Museum. It is designed for individuals who need a quieter environment to enjoy the museum, since the busy hours with the general public can be overwhelming. Those with autism spectrum conditions or with sensory processing differences can benefit from adjustments.

“We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the Trustees of The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation for their support towards Early Birds and Night Owls since 2014. Your generous contributions over a decade have played a crucial role in enabling these cherished events to accommodate the sensory needs of several families.”

FEEDBACK

“I wanted to say a huge thank you to the staff at the museum for putting on the Early Birds event last weekend. My two children are both autistic and my daughter in particular has very complex needs and usually would not be able to manage visiting somewhere like a museum. However. because of the early opening. which meant a quieter journey. the ability to park nearby. the quieter museum and reduced sensory stimulus. she was able to engage in very fun and educational visit. I am so grateful to everyone involved in putting on such an inclusive event!”

·1 just wanted to say thanks for having the event yesterday. which I attended from Oxford (handily parking in blue badge space right outside) with my 20-year old daughter and 17-year old son – who never want to do stuff together – as we are all autistic/ADHD. It felt incredibly special to be in the museum after hours and the quiet and low lights were lovely. We had an amazing time exploring the main museum and were blown away by the Power Up exhibition. which is the main reason I took my son (he’s doing gaming at college but otherwise never leaves the house). For a couple of hours we got to relax. enjoy ourselves and have fun. The staff were all really lovely and helpful. I’m definitely going to look out for similar events in future. [ … ] Thanks again for holding this event – it makes such a tremendous difference to have things like this available.”

“I wanted to thank the museum for doing these sessions for our SEN kids. I can’t tell you what it means to us parents to have these offered. My daughter is Autistic and really struggles with noise and crowds. She also cannot stand or walk for too long as she suffers from severe joint pain which is also linked to her Autism. She is passionate about Aviation and hopes to work in airline safety or for Air Traffic Control one day. Being able to visit the museum during Early Birds when it is quiet is her absolute joy. We all had such a lovely morning together. So many people write our kids off just because their brains have some different connections. But some of the greatest minds in history were neurodiverse. So thank you for including our kids in your museum events and enabling them to explore their passions to the max. We look forward to visiting again soon.”

Read the full report here.

“We remain extremely grateful to the Trustees of The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation for their generous grant of £60,000 awarded in July 2019 towards the V&A’s delivery of three accessible learning and interpretation projects: Performances for families with interpretation for deaf audiences; Young people’s SEND programming development: Hospital Schools; and Accessible interpretation for V&A FuturePlan Projects. This report provides an overview of 2023/24 actives and describes how the Foundation’s support has had a positive impact.”

Read the full report here.

Citation for Lady Estelle Wolfson

Pro -Vice-Chancellor

It is a pleasure and an honour to be able to give this oration and propose Lady Estelle Wolfson for an Honour and a Doctorate in Liverpool University. She has been a central figure in generous philanthropic support in medicine and healthcare for more than 30 years, firstly with her late husband Leonard Wolfson for the Wolfson Foundation and, since 2012, with the charity she has chaired and run – the Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Foundation – in memory of her husband who had died two years earlier.

It is perhaps not surprising that she has a strong interest and understanding of health matters given the tragic brain damage sustained by her first child Jonathan at birth and then the loss of her first husband from cancer when she was only 39. She was left with three young children, two of them here today, Antoinette and Edward. She took up voluntary work at the Royal Free Hospital…..but her life was to change just five years later when she met and married Leonard Wolfson.

She has done so much since for the welfare of others and it is so fitting we are making her an Honorary Doctor today. Her Fellowships of Academic and Medical organisations are too many to enumerate and she has the Freedom of the City of London, but I don’t think she has a doctorate before. While we would have loved to get Estelle to Liverpool for the award, the logistics were just too difficult – but Liverpool has come to you, Estelle, in the shape of an Honorary Scouser of 43 years myself, and a true born and bred Liverpudlian, Professor Louise Kenney, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Health Sciences at the University of Liverpool. It is also fitting that the ceremony should be here at a place that has benefitted so much from your hard work and support, Estelle.

She has been a Trustee of the Royal College of Physicians; she has worked with the College in advancing the role of women in healthcare and emerging women leaders. One of the women leaders celebrated at an exhibition here was Professor Dame Margaret Whitehead, from the University, a pioneer in our understanding of Health Inequalities. Also, from next year there is to be an RCP Lady Wolfson Annual Lecture in Translational Medicine – bringing medical research breakthroughs to the bedside for the benefit of patients.

We have here today a young researcher from the University, Dimitrios Charalampopoulos, who has real reason to be grateful to Lady Wolfson and her Foundation, as they have funded his Lectureship in wellbeing within the School of Public Health.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor, in the name of the Council and the Senate of this University, I present to you for admission to the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa in this University, Lady Estelle Wolfson.

 

Read the full letter here.

“We are delighted to present this report to Lady Wolfson and the Trustees of The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation and provide an insight into the progress and impact of the Dawnosaurs events programme over the past year. Dawnsosaurs events have been further enhanced this year with the addition of new themes, activities and initiatives to provide a special and enriching experience, tailored specifically for the enjoyment and needs of neurodiverse children and their families and carers. We hope you enjoy reading this overview of the accomplishments of this important programme made possible by your generous support.”

Read the full report here.

Watch below the Natural History Museum’s Dawnosaurs event for neurodivergent children (nwlondoner.co.uk)