UPDATE 5 - PERK DELIVERY SCHEDULE

Dear Supporters!
Thanks to you, we have successfully moved to the UK on 17th April 2023 and are currently in London. For the past 3 weeks, most of our time has been spent on house-hunting. Renting in the UK is a crazy full-time business: it takes 6-10 hours every day to search for a suitable property to rent, and, in our case, often involves driving around half the country. There isn't much that we can do until we have a permanent roof over our heads.

However, we do believe that the search will soon be over (we are making some offers this week), and once we have settled, the following schedule will commence:

1. We will record the Shout-Out video at a landmark and publish it.
2. T-Shirts will be imported from Italy to the UK. We will then sign them and ship them out personally to all of you.
3. Photographs will be printed, signed, and also shipped personally by us.
4. The drum skins, roll-ups and side-drops will be signed and sent out.
5. We will set the date of the Homecoming Acoustic Concert (the venue is already established) and begin rehearsals with other musicians.

Those who have a dinner booked with us, will receive an email shortly - while we are still in London.

-Aor, Jane

UPDATE 4 - Our UK Residency Has Been Approved!

Today we have finally received the Home Office's decision together with the notice that our entry visas are ready for collection! This means we are moving to the UK in a week!

For those of you who don't know yet: in January this year we (Jane and Aor) have been endorsed as "Exceptional Talents" in the field of Music by Arts Council England, after which we launched a crowdfunding campaign to relocate to the UK from Turkey where we have lived for a year. With huge support from our fans, we applied for UK residency in February from Antalya and today it was approved!

Both of us have received 3-year-long residency permission via the Global Talent route, allowing us to apply for settlement once those 3 years have passed, and after another year - for citizenship.

To say that we are overjoyed would be a great underestimation. Not only have we found freedom and a new home, but it is also a great honor for us, and the first time any official governmental institution has ever aknowledged us.

Here is to a new beginning in the Free World!

Once we arrive we will start preparing for the Acoustic Concert for Crowdfunders (you can still pledge and get tickets), and shipping all the perks!

P.S. We are searching for a short-term rent for the 1st month, to use as a base while searching for a long-term property. We haven't decided where in the country we want to live yet, but the first month will be in London or within a 60mile radius from it - because it is the best position to explore the country from.

So, if you or anyone you know has anything available in that area or in the vicinity for 1 month, please tell us at mail@imperial-age.com

UPDATE 3
Due to the continuous support you guys are giving us, and because some of you have asked to wait for payday, we prolong this campaign by another week.

We are infinitely grateful for your pledges!!

UPDATE 2
You guys are definitely the best fans in the world! 5 days ago we launched a crowdfunding campaign to help us relocate to the UK. We asked for just £5,150 to cover the NHS surcharge, but as of today, you guys have pledged us over £18,400 - and pledges keep coming in!!

We are deeply and positively shocked, we have no words, only gratitude. We could never imagine this would go so well!!

All the money you are pledging us will be used towards our relocation, and towards covering the band's debt, which, as mentioned below, grew to -30,000 USD in 2022 - mainly due to urgent relocations, concert postponements, refunds and visa issues.

We are infinitely grateful for your support!! 

We will not fail you.

UPDATE 1
We have reached our goal in less than 24 hours! Thank you so much guys!!

Since you are still pledging more, we will use this money to cover moving costs and to pay off some of the debt which we have accumulated over the past year due to all the adversities: war, relocation, visa delays, postponements etc.

We are speechless!! Thank you!!

Dear Friends and Fans!
We, Jane Odintsova and Alexander Osipov, founders of Imperial Age, have been endorsed by Arts Council England as Exceptional Talents for the Global Talent Visa UK. To move permanently we need to pay the NHS health surcharge 3 years in advance + other expenses. Staying in Turkey is no longer possible. We ask for your help to relocate ourselves and the cat to the UK for good, and to become a British band.

For a year now, we have not written a single song. Not because we don't have inspiration - but because while other bands sit comfortably at home and write new songs, we spend all our time, energy and money compensating for all the adverse factors affecting us. We would never have managed it without your support.

Almost 1 year ago, when the war started, we had to leave everything behind and escape out of Russia. As Russian citizens, we need visas almost everywhere - we can't just move around freely like, for example, EU citizens. We had only a few days to decide, and so we went for the best visa-free option - which at that time was Turkey.

Residence permits here are short and unreliable: rules change all the time without any laws. Living in constant uncertainty on foreign soil is taking a toll on everything: the band, our creativity, our health etc. Now, finally, we have a chance to leave this non-stop crisis management behind, settle in a reliable place, and once again do what we are supposed to be doing: Music.

The plan was to gain some time to finish our album "New World", play the EU/UK tour to support it, and then move onwards, to a permanent home in the West - where most of our fans live.

Now, with the albums released and the tours done, it is time to go. And we don't really even have a choice: Turkey has recently stopped issuing and prolonging residence permits for Russian citizens, and our permits run out on April 7th.

In December 2022 we applied under the Global Talent UK category (a special immigration avenue reserved for internationally acclaimed scientists, athletes and artists willing to live and work in the UK), and on 25th January 2023 were informed that Arts Council England had endorsed us as Exceptional Talents - the highest category in the programme:

This means that now we are eligible to apply for the Tier 1 - Global Talent Visa, which will allow us to live and work in the UK for 3 years, after which we can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain, and 1 year after that - for UK citizenship. According to Arts Council England, the approval rate for this visa is almost 100% after the endorsement has been issued.

This is a great honour and a significant recognition of our achievements by a major government institution, for which we are deeply thankful.

We would be happy to move right now and Imperial Age would become a British band.

However...

The only thing holding us back is money.

In order to get this visa (and 3-year UK residence permit), we need to pay the NHS surcharge for 3 years upfront, which is £2,066 per person = £4,132 for the both of us.

On top of that there is the visa cost of £162 per person, other paperwork, cat documents, flights, initial accommodation rentals and other stuff that has to do with urgent (and thus expensive) emigration.

Under normal circumstances, we would have managed it ourselves.

But all the album delays, shop relocations, tour postponements, re-schedulings and visa issues have drained us completely over the past year. Despite a very successful album launch and 2 profitable tours, we still finished 2022 with a $30,000 DEBT because we had to compensate for so many adverse factors - all of which are due to the war, postponements and their consequences. The visa issues for the UK tour alone costed us more than £7,000 this year...

Under such circumstances we simply have no capacity to move urgently to the UK right now. But we also can not stay in Turkey - because they do not prolong residence permits. And the endorsement is valid for only 3 months...

For this reason we ask for your support. Help us to urgently re-locate to the UK and end this circle of frustration, so that we can finally settle on solid ground and start doing music once again - as opposed to constant crisis management, uncertainty and stress...

We know we can count on you, and you know that you can count on us.

Some of you might wonder - why not choose a cheaper and easier country, such as Serbia, Georgia or Mexico? Or why not EU or USA/Canada?

We have been studying all possible emigration options for the past 11 months, and the UK Global Talent is simply the best choice for us, for many reasons:

It was not easy, we battled against a lot of adversity, but after many years we had everything set up properly even in such a difficult country as Russia: we had our own room which we used as the shop warehouse, office and rehearsal space. We had several people working for the band webshop. We knew all the producers of merch, we knew the post office and where to get anything: musicians, studios, engineers, equipment, etc etc.

Everything was working smoothly, and the band was growing like a snowball. The apogee of this was the Live New World online show with choir and orchestra, watched by 52,000 people worldwide and generating $21,000 in donations. The next step would have been a grand  philharmonic show...

Once the war began, all this went to hell in a blink of an eye. We found ourselves alone, torn apart both from the band and the fans. We had to urgently relocate the webshop to Italy and delegate it to a third company... We don't know anyone any longer, and doing the simplest stuff now takes ages.

The UK is the perfect solution to all this - it is a place where we can once again build on solid rock, and not on sand. We can re-create what we did in Russia, but on a different scale, in a better environment and on a different level of quality.

After all, London, together with New York and Los Angeles, is one of the capitals of the world music industry...

In order to express our gratitude for your help, we have prepared multiple Rewards. You can choose multiple Rewards or you can just pledge without any reward - up to you: