THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE WILL ATTEND THE LAUNCH OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCIES TRUST

St Martin-in-the-Fields, London

Thursday 7th November 2019

THE QUEEN WILL GIVE A RECEPTION AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE TO CELEBRATE THE WORK OF THE QUEEN ELIZABETH DIAMOND JUBILEE TRUST

Tuesday, 29th October 2019

Her Majesty The Queen will give a reception at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the work of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust on Tuesday, 29th October 2019.

THE DUKE OF SUSSEX WILL ATTEND THE LAUNCH OF TEAM UK FOR THE INVICTUS GAMES THE HAGUE 2020

Honourable Artillery Company, London

Tuesday 29th October 2019

The Duke of Sussex, Patron of the Invictus Games Foundation, will attend the launch of the team selected to represent the UK at the Invictus Games The Hague 2020 on Tuesday 29th October.

The 65-strong team of wounded, injured and sick (WIS) Service personnel, both serving and veterans, will come together for the first time at the Honourable Artillery Company in London. More than 30 percent of Team UK are still serving and 89 percent have never competed at an Invictus Games before, demonstrating the ongoing impact of the games in the recovery journey of those with life changing injuries or illnesses.

His Royal Highness will meet the team ahead of the forthcoming Games, and pose for the first official team photograph. The Duke will then spend time meeting competitors and finding out more about their recovery journey and the impact the games are having on their lives, as well as those of their family and friends.

The Invictus Games is an international sport event for wounded, injured and sick Servicemen and women, both serving and veteran. The Games use the power of sport to inspire recovery, support rehabilitation and generate a wider understanding and respect of all those who serve their country. The UK is one of 19 nations who will be taking part in the fifth Invictus Games from 9-16 May in The Hague, The Netherlands. Over 500 competitors will compete in 10 adaptive sports.

Invictus UK, a partnership made up of Help for Heroes, the Royal British Legion and the Ministry of Defence, is responsible for the identification, training and delivery of the UK team to the Invictus Games The Hague 2020. The Team UK trials, which were held in Sheffield in July this year, were attended by more than 350 wounded, injured and sick Service personnel who competed across nine sports for one of the places available on the team.

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THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE WILL ATTEND THE LONDON’S AIR AMBULANCE CHARITY GALA

Rosewood Hotel, London WC2

Thursday 7th November, 2019

The Duke of Cambridge, Patron of London’s Air Ambulance Charity’s 30th Anniversary Campaign, will attend the London’s Air Ambulance Charity gala on Thursday 7th November.

THE DUCHESS OF CORNWALL WILL ATTEND A COMMEMORATIVE SERVICE AT ST BRIDE’S CHURCH

TUESDAY 29TH OCTOBER 2019

The Duchess of Cornwall, Patron, the Guild of St Bride, will attend a service to commemorate journalists, camera-crew and support staff who have lost their lives on the frontline.

St Bride’s Church is located on Fleet Street and considered by many to be the spiritual home for journalists throughout the world. The church contains the Journalists’ Altar, commemorating those who lost their lives reporting the news.

The church hosts an annual service commemorating journalists, camera-crew and support staff who have lost their lives on the frontline. This year the service is entitled “Bearing Witness” and serves to remind us that there are many journalists who are missing or held captive, and many who continue to report at great risk.

An Address will be given by Photographer and Filmmaker, Paul Conroy, and Readings will be given by other senior figures across the media industry. The Service will be led by Canon Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride’s and attendees are expected to include the families of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese investigative journalist murdered in 2017 and Christopher Allen, a British-American journalist murdered in South Sudan in 2017.

Her Royal Highness became Patron of the Guild of St Bride in 2012 and has attended the service three times before, in 2017, 2012 and 2010.

Following the service Her Royal Highness will meet families of those who have lost their lives before attending a reception at The Humble Grape.

St Bride’s Church

St Bride’s is the church of the media and the press. To enter its doors is to step into 2,000 years of history, which had begun with the Romans some six centuries before the name of St Bride, daughter of an Irish prince, even emerged from legend to become associated forever with the site.

The story of St Bride’s is inextricably woven into the history of the City of London. By the time the Great Fire of 1666 left the church in ruins, a succession of churches had existed on the site for about a millennium, and the area had already assumed its unique role in the emergence of English printing. It took nine years for St Bride’s to re-appear from the ashes under the inspired direction of Christopher Wren, but for the next two-and-a-half centuries it was in the shadow of the church’s unmistakeable wedding-cake spire that the rise of the British newspaper industry into the immensely-powerful Fourth Estate took place.

Then, in 1940, St Bride’s fell victim once again to flames as German incendiary bombs reduced Wren’s architectural jewel to a roofless shell. This time 17 years elapsed before rebuilding was completed, although a series of important excavations in 1953 amid the skeletal ruins, led by the medieval archaeologist Professor W. F. Grimes, came up with extraordinary results, uncovering the foundations of all six previous churches on the site.

THE DUCHESS OF CORNWALL HOSTS A RECEPTION FOR WINNERS OF THE QUEEN’S COMMONWEALTH ESSAY COMPETITION

Thursday 31st October 2019

The Duchess of Cornwall, Vice-Patron of The Royal Commonwealth Society, on behalf of Her Majesty The Queen, Patron of The Royal Commonwealth Society, will hold a reception for winners of The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition 2019, Buckingham Palace, London SW1 1AA.

During the reception extracts from the winning pieces will be read by authors Geri Horner, Candice Cartey-Williams, Evie Wyld, Ben Okri and William Boyd. Gyles Brandreth will act as compère for the afternoon’s events.

The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition is the world’s oldest international writing competition for schools. It was founded in 1883 to promote literacy, expression and creativity among young people throughout the Commonwealth.

In 2019, more than 11,000 entries were received on the theme of ‘A Connected Commonwealth’ from almost every country in the Commonwealth. This year’s topic called upon young people to consider how they can work to use cultural, technological and environmental connections for positive change across the Commonwealth. It asked young people to consider the potential of the Commonwealth in strengthening the vast and varied links between citizens.

The winners and runners-up are aged between 12 and 18 years old and will travel from Canada, Nigeria, Singapore and Ghana to be presented with their certificates by The Duchess of Cornwall at Buckingham Palace. Read more about the winners and their essays here.

The final judging decision was taken by an expert panel of authors, directors and poets, which included Young People’s Laureate for London Theresa Lola; spoken word artist Jaspreet Kaur; Theatre Director Max Webster; Novelist Wendy Holden; Education Programme Manager at the Royal African Society Joanna Brown; and Theatre Director Femi Elufowoju Jr.

The reception will be attended by the award winners and their families, final panel judges and notable literary figures from across the Commonwealth.

Kieran Shafritz de Zoysa

This year there is an additional runner-up in the Junior category, 11-year-old Kieran Shafritz de Zoysa. Kieran was tragically killed in a terrorist attack at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. His essay was the final piece of school work he completed and was entered posthumously by his mother, Dhulsini, who will attend the reception to receive his certificate.

The Royal Commonwealth Society

The Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS), founded in 1868, is a network of individuals and organisations committed to improving the lives and prospects of Commonwealth citizens across the world. Through youth empowerment, education and advocacy, the RCS promotes the value and values of the Commonwealth.

THE DUCHESS OF CORNWALL WILL CARRY OUT ENGAGEMENTS IN EAST LONDON

Wednesday 30th October 2019

Engagement 1

The Duchess of Cornwall will visit Mulberry School for Girls. The school plays an important part in the Women of the World (WOW) Festival of which HRH is President. Exploring the theme ‘Partnership of Equals’, The Duchess will tour the school, participate in a roundtable discussion and meet the school’s therapy dog.

The first part of the tour will include a WOW themed marketplace hosted in the school’s library. The stalls will showcase the school’s work and relationship with WOW and include a specific focus on Community Learning, Partnership of Equals and The Mulberry Schools Foundation.

Her Royal Highness will then visit English lessons and the dance studio where a performance of Swan Lake in which the gender roles are reversed will be rehearsed. The Duchess will watch a performance by Mulberry Theatre Company (inspired by Donmar’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy) which was written and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival earlier this year before joining a round-table discussion on issues raised during the play.

The Duchess will view works in the Mulberry Art Gallery before joining students in the courtyard where they will sing a Scottish folk song, ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ around the Mulberry Tree from which the School takes its name.

Finally, The Duchess will meet the school’s therapy dog before departing.

Mulberry School for Girls

The Duchess last visited Mulberry School for Girls in February 2013.

Mulberry School for Girls pioneers high quality education for girls and women locally, nationally and globally. The keystone of this work is developing confidence, creativity, leadership and the love of learning in Mulberry girls. Mulberry has also reached out to families – in particular, mothers – in this work, offering rich opportunities to do the same for them. (Mothers are joining the movement, writing and performing their own drama, setting up their own NGOs and insisting on their voices being heard.) The way to break cycles of poverty and worklessness is to provide through education opportunities to gain excellent qualifications, to break down barriers created through social stereotyping and prejudice, and to open up as many possibilities to build confidence as we can.

The quality of education offered at Mulberry placed the school in the top 130 selective and non-selective schools in 2018 for progress and 94% of pupils study the EBacc (The English Baccalaureate) with arts (known as Mulbacc). The arts have been a significant force in the school’s work to deliver this quality, which is why an arts GCSE is compulsory alongside the EBacc. In addition, the enriched extra-curricular education programme is designed to promote the voice and visibility of Mulberry girls and the women of the school community.

Women of the World (WOW) Festival

The Duchess of Cornwall is President of the Women of the World (WOW) Festival. Head Teacher of Mulberry School for Girls, Vanessa Ogden is a Trustee of the WOW Foundation.

WOW festivals began in the UK in 2010 and were launched by Jude Kelly at Southbank Centre London, where she was Artistic Director. They celebrate women and girls, taking a frank look at what prevents them from achieving their potential, raising awareness globally of the issues they face and discussing solutions together.

To date, WOW has reached over two million people in 17 countries on five continents across over 65 festivals – and growing – including in Australia, Brazil, China, Finland, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Somaliland, the UK and the USA. In 2018 WOW took place in Rio, Karachi, Beijing, Cardiff and Bradford, as well as London, New York, Dhaka, Pakistan Atlanta, Istanbul and China in 2019 and 2020.

Over the last nine years the Festivals have developed a reputation as a space for world renowned artists, activists, thinkers and performers including Angela Davies, Malala Yousafzai, Annie Lennox, Patrick Stewart, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Salma Hayek, to come and participate, alongside thousands of women and girls who don’t have public profiles but are doing amazing things. WOW provides platforms for people of all kinds, changes attitudes, brings communities together and provides a unique space for people to work together towards gender equality in their own communities. One example of the impact the festival came in 2015, with the founding of the Women’s Equality Party by Sandi Toksvig and Catherine Mayer.

Mulberry School for Girls has had a deep and enduring partnership with Jude Kelly, the Women of the World Festival and now with its Foundation. Participating extensively in the first WOW festival, many of the girls were placed on panels at Jude’s invitation giving them voice and visibility in the debate about gender equality and how to achieve it. They walked with Jude, Bianca Jagger, Helena Kennedy and others in the first Women’s March, releasing doves on the bridge and speaking powerfully at the plenary afterwards.

Working with Jude, the school continues to contribute to WOW and has led the education conferences in the past as well as being involved extensively in WOW’s celebration of International Day of the Girl 2019.

Engagement 2

The Duchess of Cornwall will attend The Royal Foundation of St Katharine which hosts retreats, acts as a conference venue for charities and NGOs and provides a meeting space for women’s groups, artists and community organisations. HRH will meet staff and community groups in the Chapel, charities at St Katharine’s precinct and visit the Yurt Café- a social enterprise with price-protected items, ensuring the menu is accessible to all.

The Duchess will meet the board of The Royal Foundation of St Katharine as well as trustees upon arrival.

Her Royal Highness will first visit the chapel where she will be greeted by the performance of a community singing group and meet with staff. Here, Her Royal Highness will unveil a small plaque to mark the visit.

The Duchess will proceed to meet charity groups who use the spaces offered by St Katharine’s. Her Royal Highness will then move outdoors where she will meet a gardening group, tour the gardens and visit the precinct – an outdoor space consisting of recycled shipping containers and yurts.

Finally, the visit will conclude with a visit to the Yurt café – a social enterprise with price-protected items.

The Royal Foundation of St Katharine

Founded by Queen Matilda in 1147, The Royal Foundation of St Katharine has acted as a centre for worship, hospitality and service for over 870 years. Worship, Hospitality and Service to others in the community remain the core tenets for life at St Katharine’s.

Today the Royal Foundation of St Katharine is a Retreat House and Conference Centre providing services to others in the East End of London. As a retreat house St Katharine’s has a calm welcoming environment where visitors can get away from the busyness of life and restore their spiritual and emotional wellbeing. St Katharine’s also welcomes Faith Groups, Charities and Not for Profit organisations to hold conference and events in London at accessible prices. At St Katharine’s Precinct, the Foundation serves the community with hospitality at The Yurt Café and facilitates a range of community activity groups.

Charity and Not for Profit organisations holding events at St Katharine’s

Tower Hamlets Mental Health Liaison and Psychological Medicine Service – East London NHS Trust

Providing mental health crisis services throughout Tower Hamlets – ‘We care, we respect and we are inclusive.’ Rated outstanding by the Quality Care Commission.

Aston Mansfield – Creating Stronger Communities

Aston Mansfield is a locally rooted organisation that wants to see more young people and families in Newham and East London leading happy and healthy lives, realising their potential and unlocking their ambition.

Community Groups

St Katharine’s Community Gardening Group

Led by Stephen Sheil with core members Julie, Lavender, Hannah and Stuart, the community gardening group grow fresh produce which is served at The Yurt Café. They lead gardening education and activity days for children and adults throughout the year plus maintain and manage the grounds and Wild Flower banks of St Katharine’s Precinct.

Tower Project & St Katharine’s – Job Enterprise Training Interns

The Tower Project is a community based voluntary sector organization and service provider for children and adults with learning disability, sensory disability, autism, physical disability of health related issues. Jamie Crouch, Training Team Manager, works closely with St Katharine’s which accepts and trains four 17 year old interns each year. The interns have previously only experienced life in protected environments. St Katharine’s exposes the young people to the realities of working life at a supportive and caring pace where they are able to adjust and thrive.

St Katharine’s Community Singing Group

Led by Ugne Audzeviciute, a staff member at St Katharine’s, the group meets on a Wednesday evening to celebrate the joys of communal singing. Three members of the group have dedicated time to provide background accompaniment during the visit to St Katharine’s Chapel.

THE DUCHESS OF SUSSEX WILL ATTEND THE ONE YOUNG WORLD SUMMIT OPENING CEREMONY

Royal Albert Hall

Tuesday 22nd October 2019