MUSIC FOR YOUTH PERTH PROM – FREE TICKETS AVAILABLE!

PERTH CONCERT HALL

FRIDAY 28 OCTOBER  2011, 1.30PM-3PM

Music for Youth is coming to Perth with a free concert showcasing some exceptional talent from within Scotland.

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MFY’s Perth Prom will provide first hand experience of live music-making in a fun and engaging environment.  Presenting dynamic, vibrant and eclectic performances by young people, this concert aims to inspire and motivate the next generation of music-makers and will feature performances from some talented local groups, including groups from Drake Music, the National Youth Choir of Scotland, the Scottish Brass Band Association plus more to be announced.  Taking place at Perth Concert Hall, tickets are free and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please find attached an event flyer and booking form.  If your school would like to apply for tickets, please complete the enclosed booking form and return it to us by email or fax.  We’re delighted to be expanding our work in Scotland and really hope you’ll be able to join us for this event.

If you would like any further details about the Perth Prom please get in touch on 020 7759 1830 or at mfy@mfy.org.uk<mailto:mfy@mfy.org.uk>.

Year of Creative Scotland 2012

Year of Creative Scotland 2012

Year of Creative Scotland and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, cultural programmes offer a significant opportunity over a three-year period.

Year of Creative Scotland 2012 will promote Scotland’s cultural vibrancy, shining a light on our creative assets; promoting our festivals, our performers, our writers and our great cities. It will celebrate our inspiring creative communities and inspire people across Scotland to engage with arts and culture and to explore their own creativity.

You can apply now for support through four investment opportunities:

  • Culture and Tourism: we wish to encourage the cultural sector to engage more effectively with the tourism industry with a view to: increasing audiences; increasing attendances at cultural events by domestic and international visitors; and improving the trading position of cultural businesses. The first deadline for this programme is 29 September 2011, with a second deadline of 31 January 2012.
  • One Step Further (Festivals Growth): as part of the celebration and promotion of 2012 as Year of Creative Scotland, we are offering opportunities for existing festivals and events to enhance their programme and generate more tourist visits to their event. The deadline for this programme is 17 October 2011.
  • First in a Lifetime: Scotland is a creative nation with world-class artists and creative practitioners, but not everyone gets to enjoy or take part in creative activity. They may have been prevented from doing this because of lack of opportunity, financial constraints, social inequalities, location, access issues or just lack of confidence. We want to help exceptional artists and creative people, and organisations of quality, to increase “first in a lifetime” opportunities for people who do not normally get the chance. The deadlines for this programme are 29 September 2011 and 31 January 2012.
  • Creative Places Awards: Scotland has a wealth of festivals, events and year-round creative activities that not only enhance peoples’ lives, but also act as a magnet for visitors and contribute to local economies. Much of this activity takes place outside of the big urban centres; in small towns, villages and other communities, often in areas remote from the main population centres. We want to celebrate the value of creativity to the social and economic wellbeing of communities, and to reward the hard work and imagination that lies behind the success of such places. The deadline is 28 October 2011.

Creative Identities: Dance, Film and Music

Creative Identities is part of the Scottish Government’s CashBack for Communities programme which reinvests the proceeds of crime back into communities to benefit Scotland’s young people. Creative Identities investment provides access to high quality experiential opportunities for young people in dance, film and music within communities.

Dance: YouthLink Scotland will manage a programme to provide young people with a range of opportunities to develop their dance skills.

Film and Digital Media: will provide young people from all backgrounds with opportunities to develop their skills, talent, creativity and confidence whilst also developing their knowledge, understanding and appreciation of film & digital media.

Music – Independent Music Making: will support professional recording/rehearsal studios, or organisations working in partnership with professional recording/rehearsal studios, to offer young people opportunities to record their first professional demo tracks.

For more details visit Investment Programme 15: Creative Identities

Other new investment programmes include:

Traditional Arts: there are two new programmes:

  • The first will invest in new Traditional Arts Commissions of various scales that can be performed regionally, nationally and internationally – from small scale productions which can be toured regionally, up to large scale productions that can engage on an international stage.
  • The second will invest in Traditional Arts Mentoring and Advanced Tutoring to develop Scotland’s traditional arts base by strengthening the transmission of skills, approaches and techniques between artists. Traditional arts is taken to encompass Dance, Music and Storytelling within the traditions which are actively practiced within Scotland.

Our Capital programme will invest in cultural facilities, refurbishments and equipment, which improve access, presentation and enjoyment of the arts and film for the population of Scotland and has a deadline of 30 September 2011.

Youth Music Initiative: To support and create access to high quality music making programmes particularly for young people that would not normally engage in music activities.

Investment Surgeries

Creative Scotland is hosting Investment Surgeries across Scotland. Meet Creative Scotland staff face-to-face to talk about your project and our Investment Programmes.  September’s surgeries will be held in:

You should read the guidelines for the programme you are interested in before your surgery to ensure that you and your project meet the criteria for investment. To book an appointment, email: pmo@creativescotland.com

Arts and Older People – Festival 2012

Creative Scotland, in partnership with the Baring Foundation and Age Scotland, is planning an inspiring and ambitious annual festival of arts for, by, with and about older people. The first festival will take place in October 2012. But we need your help to plan! There is a lot of arts and ageing activity taking place throughout Scotland and we want to map this to shape the new festival. We are particularly interested in hearing about inter-generational arts activity, arts programmes in residential care homes, and existing local festivals targeting older people. If you are involved in any activity of this nature then please share it with us by emailing: maggie.maxwell@creativescotland.com

Meet, greet and hot desk

We have a number of hot-desk and meeting spaces in our Edinburgh office that are available from the beginning of September, for the creative community to work from. To book a touch down space please email:reception.edinburgh@creativescotland.com

And finally…Opportunities!

Since we introduced our
Opportunities site in June, we’ve had over 75,000 hits and hundreds of opportunities have been uploaded. That’s a fantastic response and tells us it’s a useful tool for you, your organisation or your sector. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out.

Online voting open! – Scots Words and Place-names Competition

Cast your vote online now to choose the winners of the SWAP competition at: http://bit.ly/jSEjAL

Congratulations to everyone who submitted an entry – there were some fantastic pieces of work! The finalists have now been picked and these entries are available to read on the SWAP Glow group site. Choose your favourite in each category and vote for it to win.

The online voting for the SWAP competition will continue (at http://bit.ly/jSEjAL) until Friday so please encourage everyone at your school to take the time to read the entries and vote for their favourites in each Primary category (the Secondary entries are being judged by the university). Please also spread the word to anyone else with a Glow login! The voting is very close so the winners could all change by Friday. The winners will be announced on 3rd September at a prize-giving held at the University of Glasgow and announced on the SWAP Glow site.

Storytelling for Children with Complex Needs

Join storyteller and puppeteer Aileen Finlay to hear about her experiences of developing storytelling projects for children with complex special needs. Discover some approaches to finding and adapting appropriate stories, take away practical hints and tips on making and using props to support the stories and discuss ideas surrounding the potential of multi-sensory storytelling.
£30/£26 Network members
Bookings: 0131 556 9579
This opportunity is available in: Edinburgh City
For further information, please contact reception@scottishstorytellingcentre.com (Reception), or call 0131 556 9579, or visit http://www.scottishstorytellingcentre.co.uk

My Scotland – writing competition for young people

Young people are being invited to write stories for a fantastic new book about Scotland that will be published in November 2011. Writers aged from 8 to 12 can submit their own stories about the nation for the book entitled ‘My Scotland’.
Described as a snappy and stimulating superstore of stories covering the history, landscape and people of Scotland this new book will feature 366 fascinating stories intended to bring Scotland’s history and culture to life in a way that appeals to all ages.
Twelve winning stories will be selected for publication in the book in a competition open to young people anywhere in Scotland.
My Scotland co-author David Simpson is keen to encourage contributions from Scotland’s young people: “Seeing their work published provides young writers with a sense of achievement that gives them greater confidence to develop their writing” says David.
The only criteria for entering the competition is that the stories must be about Scotland, though this is open to imaginative interpretation.
“Writers can explore any element of Scotland that interests them whether it be the people, landmarks, history, cities, towns, villages their local school, anything” says David. “The stories should be a maximum of 250 words and may be written in any genre such as descriptive, expository, narrative, persuasive, poetry or technical”.
Entry forms for the competition can be downloaded from the publisher’s website at www.myworldpublishing.co.uk
The closing date for competition entries is Friday September 30, 2011
For further information call David Simpson on 0191 305 5201
Contact: David Simpson
Tel: 0191 305 5201
Email: david.simpson@myworldpublishing.co.uk

Highland pupils first to perform WWF musical in Scotland

WWF is marking its 50th anniversary in style this year with the Scottish premiere of its musical ‘One Sun One World’. The piece has been specially commissioned by the environmental charity and will be performed for the first time in Scotland on Saturday 19 November at the Macdonald Aviemore Highland Resort Hotel at 2pm.

Young musicians from all over Highland, who form the Highland Youth Orchestra and Youth Choir, along with pupils from Kingussie High School and its associated primary schools, will be performing the piece and rehearsals for them begin this weekend.  These two groups and the 6 others supported by The Highland Council have a schedule of weekend rehearsals for the November Concerts weekend which will also see performances by the other Groups throughout the day.  More information about the Concerts can be seen at: www.highland-young-musicians.com

http://www.highland.gov.uk/yourcouncil/news/newsreleases/2011/August/2011-08-23-07.htm

European Space Agency – ‘satellite in a can’ competition

Entries wanted for the 2012 European CanSat competition http://www.cansat.eu/

The European Space Agency (ESA) is holding a Europe-wide competition for schools to create a working satellite within the confines of a soft drinks can. The chosen projects will compete in the final in Norway in April 2012 when the selected 10 satellites from all over Europe will be launched by rocket to the height of about 1 km and will carry out some real science.

ESA have allocated one guaranteed launch slot to the winners of the Scottish Cansat Competition to be held for Scottish schools between September 2011 and March 2012. The competition is open to pupils aged 16 and over. Your school could be there!

This is a fantastic opportunity to have your school compete and hopefully win a prestigious Europe-wide science competition. Please respond to Dr. Paul Lyden (Paul_Lyden@BTInternet.com) by 7 September if you are interested in taking part.

Please visit the website www.cansat.eu for more information.

Creativity at SLF 2011

There are just four weeks left to book your free place at this year’s Scottish Learning Festival and a quick search under Creativity shows you there is plenty of innovation and inspiration to take advantage of.

There are 25 seminars and 1 keynote speaker who make direct use of creativity in their work.

Sir John Jones has a reputation for straight talking, leadership and creativity and in his keynote entitled The Future Is Not What It Was he will argue that ‘Unless we are prepared to embrace change and champion innovation and creativity we may miss a huge opportunity to help create a world in which every child really does matter and none is left behind.’

You can register for SLF 2011 at the SLF website.