Over the weekend (Saturday the 9th to Sunday the 10th of August 2025) Southampton Ukulele Jam (SUJ) overwhelmingly accomplished a most marvellous thing.
By playing their ‘tiny toy instruments’ for 30hrs 1min and 25secs continuously, with only 30 secs allowed between each song and 5 min break every hour …. (it is very surprising how short 5 mins is when you have to navigate 3 flights of stairs in a medieval tower just to get to the toilet – particularly at 03:55 in the morning after playing ukulele for 13hrs, they note) ... they have:
- Raised more than £12,000 (and counting) shared between their four charities, No Limits, Yellow Door, Society of St James, and Mountbatten Hospice
- United people across the ukulele world, and beyond
- Made the world a tiny bit better
- To date 569 people have donated online (and more donated in person at GHT)
- 8,302 visits logged on the live stream including Susan from Indiana chatting to Jackie from New Zealand about how they first heard about the event on Fragile Lucy’s Ukulele Radio Show (Fiesta Radio Monday nights from 18:00)
One Jammer reflected: “I’d expected the event to be tiring and a bit gruelling but hadn’t expected it to be quite so emotional. But all of us pulling together and being utterly determined to do our absolute best was really quite something. The world can seem utterly sh**e sometimes but for thirty hours over the weekend, GHT was a little oasis of all that is best about humanity.
“We set our original target at £1,000: £250 for each charity. That, we thought, felt like a nice amount of money to give to four worthy causes and would make all of this work feel worthwhile.
“Then, before we’d even picked up our ukuleles, we beat that target.
“So we increased it to what felt like our dream goal: £1,000 for each of the four charities, aiming for £4,000 in total. After about 6 ½ hours of playing and a lot of begging people to try and balance the donations between the four charities, we beat the £4,000 target.
So we increased it to £6,000, and then to £8,000, and then to £10,000.
At the end of the 30 hours, we had raised £10,016: over 10 times what we set out to raise at the beginning.”
Their donation pages are still open (justgiving.com/team/southamptonukulelejam), and there are some offline donations to count as well (including a cash bucket and card machine donations that were taken from the in person audience at God’s House Tower).
The Jam was alsp thrilled to have had shout outs from Chris Hawkins, Nick Grimshaw and Sara Cox on Radio Two and Rick Jackson on Radio Solent and many other places and featured on BBC South Today.
The event ended in true SUJ style with a bouncing rendition of Should I Stay or Should I Go, by The Clash, to a packed and jubilant God’s House Tower.
One of the group’s founder members, Colin, shared his immediate reflections: “All that we have achieved this weekend is down to so many people. Jammers have truly put their hearts and soul into this amazing thing. We are at our best when we work together. Unity truly is Strength.
“From the bottom of our hearts, Southampton Ukulele Jam wishes to thank every single person who donated, whether you gave £1 or £100. The money we have raised will help people in our city in need of support. Together, we have made the world a tiny bit better. We hope you feel inspired to do the same.”
It’s not too late to make a donation – visit justgiving.com/team/southamptonukulelejam
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