The Antigua Team: Meet Ellen Wilkinson
Ellen has been a regular member of the Commonwealth Resounds Team for many years and it is a great to see her return with us for her latest trip to the island. Find out more about our 2026 Antigua Trip
Ellen Wilkinson returns to Antigua
Ellen Wilkinson is an oboist, writer and arts educator who graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2023 with First Class Honours. She also founded the conservatoire’s student newspaper, RAMpage News. In November 2026, she will return to Antigua with The Commonwealth Resounds for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). She will perform with the World Orchestra alongside international instrumentalists and members of the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra, coach young wind players, and lead poetry and music workshops with the Commonwealth People’s Forum.
I am so touched to be invited to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2026. Antigua and Barbuda is extremely special to me; its vibrant steel pan bands, gorgeous sands and sumptuous mangoes have shaped my growth into adulthood, as well as my development as a musician and community leader. I will be delighted to connect with my Antiguan friends at such an important international event, broaden my global connections with inspiring cultural leaders and, most importantly, play music!
“I hope that I can bring joy and creativity, and celebrate our differences.”
Ellen’s connection with The Commonwealth Resounds began through community music projects with Alison Cox while she was a student at The Purcell School between 2017 and 2019. She joined the charity’s first visit to Antigua and Barbuda in 2019, coaching the oboes and wider woodwind section of the youth orchestra, and has returned several times to teach and lead creative workshops. She has also launched the Commonwealth Music Ambassadors programme, which aims to connect musical representatives who champion their culture and music education internationally.
I am also so excited to have recently launched the organisation’s Commonwealth Music Ambassador programme, which connects musical representatives of each commonwealth nation to champion their culture and education programmes on international platforms, such as CHOGM.
What does succesul musical collaboration look like to you?
Taking inspiration from different ways of working, and exploring how they can spark creativity. There is always more in common than not. Bringing laughter to the rehearsal space; ease creates connection, which translates to the music making and to the audience.
Ellen returns to Antigua keen to learn from the musicians she meets. She admires the listening skills, rhythmic confidence and improvisation she has encountered, and hopes to develop greater freedom away from printed music herself. She also sees lessons for British music-making in steel pan groups that bring together children and experienced players, often from the same families. Her approach to collaboration gives shared enjoyment and relaxed rehearsals an important place alongside musical skills.
Ellen’s message to leaders at CHOGM draws on her work with young people in a hospital school, an adolescent psychiatric ward, a nursery and a pupil referral unit. She sees accessible music-making as a way to help children express themselves, build confidence and learn to work with others. Her focus is on recognising what each child can contribute, and on the relationships and emotional skills they can carry into later life.
With accessible ways of working, music is an equaliser; it is a tool for self expression, building confidence, growing skills in collaboration and showing that you can have fun through work. A child who disrupts a maths lesson is able to keep a steady drum beat, a non-verbal child is able to make a loud noise by hitting a bell, a toddler learns how to hold an instrument with care.