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TRH visit two of The Prince's Charities on The Prince of Wales's 60th birthday

14th November 2008

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall visited projects run by two of The Prince's Charities today on His Royal Highness's 60th birthday.

In the first engagement of the day, Their Royal Highnesses visited Beckton Community Centre in East London to meet young people helped by The Prince’s Trust, and afterwards visited the Royal Opera House to meet children helped by his Foundation for Children and the Arts and attend a special birthday concert.

During the visit to Beckton Community Centre, The Prince launched The Prince’s Trust’s first-ever Youth Week, a seven-day campaign to highlight the good that young people can offer society.

As part of the campaign, 50 MPs across the UK will be shadowed during their constituency visits by young volunteers who have had their lives turned around by The Prince's Trust.

The Trust has forged an alliance with 14 other national youth organisations, including the NSPCC and Barnardo's, to counter negative stereotypes of young people, and a host of Premiership football stars, including Rio Ferdinand, will visit Trust projects.

During the visit, The Prince and The Duchess toured two projects where Prince's Trust volunteers had been working with local communities.

At the Stroud Pavilion, young people taking part in the Trust's 12-week Team Programme course, which builds life skills, had decorated the building and reclaimed a disused bowling green for residents.

The centre will be used by pre-school children and their parents.

The nearby Beckton Community Centre has Trust volunteers involved in work experience placements at the building.

When The Prince and The Duchess arrived at the pavilion, volunteers were putting the finishing touches to two large tubs filled with flowers, while others were painting murals inside the centre.

Ibrahim Mehmet, from Dagenham, East London, put down his paintbrush to chat to The Prince.

The 20-year-old, who also celebrates his birthday today, said: "He asked me if I was enjoying the work and I said I was.

"I wished him Happy Birthday and he wished me one back. Then he asked if I was 24 and I said 'No, I'm 20', and he said 'You're still young. I can't remember when I was 20'."

The Trust's National Youth Week begins tomorrow and aims to highlight the positive contribution young people make to society and the work the Trust does to help youngsters forge careers for themselves.

Their Royal Highnesses also met Michael Baptiste, 26, who has set up a sports project to encourage youngsters to stay away from trouble.

Mr Baptiste launched the Shoot A Ball Not A Gun initiative in 2006, where teenagers are encouraged to get involved in a basketball tournament which features some of the country's top players.

The 26-year-old is a former national basketball player and also organises summer camps to encourage children from estates to take up the sport.

He described how his love of the game probably saved him from becoming involved in gun crime.

"When I was at school, one of my best friends got shot and there were other people getting into trouble," he said.

"I was always involved in training for basketball and doing my homework and I realised that, unless the kids had something to focus on like a sport, they could find themselves in trouble and so I set up my project to try to encourage them."

The Prince ended his visit by making a short speech to the Trust volunteers, telling them: "I just want to congratulate all those young people who are making a fantastic difference through leading, motivating and inspiring others, partly as a result, I hope, of having been through some of our programmes.

"A lot of the future is going to depend on all of you, and all you have been doing over all of these years, believe it or not, is investing in the future.

"So I hope you can provide the kind of return I've been expecting in terms of what you can do for your own communities and other people."

The Prince was left smiling when one woman if she could give him a peck on the cheek for his birthday.

The life coach from Beckton said afterwards: "I'm in shock, I can't believe I did that.

"He's not proud or stuck up and I just thought 'why not?'!”

Miss Qureshi added: "What a lovely man. I think he's misunderstood, a lot of the things he was saying 10 or 15 years ago are now in the mainstream."

Outside, The Prince laughed when he received a birthday cake from the Sun newspaper which was decorated with a picture of a national travel bus pass for seniors.

Later in the day, The Prince and The Duchess attended a concert in The Prince’s honour at the Royal Opera House in London.

The concert was set up by The Prince’s Foundation for Children and The Arts, which aims to introduce as many children as possible to the best the arts have to offer.

The Philharmonia Orchestra, of which The Prince is Patron, played a number of classical pieces, and a selection of children from across the country who have been helped by the charity sang a beautiful Welsh song and Happy Birthday to The Prince.

In a speech, The Prince said that he wanted to see more children introduced to the arts so that they might be inspired and their own talents be recognised.

He told the pupils: "I'm hoping that quite a lot of you might even become inspired yourselves as a result of seeing this (performance).

"There's so much talent in this country but you have to allow it to come out and it has to come out through that initial inspiration."

He reminisced about being taken to the opera at the age of seven by his grandmother which, he said, "electrified" him and inspired his love of the arts.

The pupils at the concert came from six schools around the country which have taken part in music programmes run by The Prince's Foundation for Children and the Arts, which was launched by The Prince in 2002.

Its aim is to particularly focus on young people who would otherwise grow up having had little or no opportunity to engage with the arts.

The children thanked The Prince with a chorus of Happy Birthday, accompanied by his wife, The Duchess of Cornwall, the orchestra and the audience.

The Philharmonia Orchestra performed a variety of popular classical pieces, including Richard Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries and an excerpt from Gustav Holst's The Planets.

The Prince’s official harpist, Claire Jones, performed the world premiere of a new piece for harp by Patrick Hawes, commissioned especially for The Prince's birthday and called Goddess Of The Woods.

The moving piece of music was inspired by Mr Hawes’s visit to the woods at Highgrove and was commissioned by Salvi, the harp makers.

In honour of The Prince’s love for the instrument, 60 harpists massed on the balcony around the concert hall performed a piece by 18th Century composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Prince described that fact that so many people were playing the harp around the country as "immensely encouraging".

Illustrator Quentin Blake and children's author Michael Morpurgo presented The Prince with a copy of The Birthday Book, an anthology of children's stories and poems about birthdays published to celebrate his 60th.

All proceeds from the book will go to The Prince’s Foundation for Children and The Arts.

Mr Morpurgo wished The Prince Happy Birthday with great “affection” and said: "The Prince has contributed massively to the cultural life of this country and has made a unique contribution bringing in children to the best of the arts."

The Prince joked that today's concert was "consolation" for him.

"I'd been led to expect at least 60 presents from my darling wife on this occasion but unfortunately I seem to have only ended up with one," he said referring to incorrect reports that The Duchess was to have bought him 60 birthday presents.

The Prince thanked everyone involved in the occasion and said: "It is the best possible birthday I could have imagined and I'm so touched."

The concert was also attended by supporters of the charity and dignitaries such as London Mayor Boris Johnson and Culture Minister Barbara Follett.

Meanwhile, The King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery fired a 41-Gun Salute in London's Hyde Park to mark The Prince of Wales’s 60th birthday.

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