news – Making Music

October 23, 2020October 23, 2020

Borders Youth Music Forum

The Borders Youth Music Forum has been going for a number a years under the project name SoundCycle. Funding and lockdown temporarily halted things for but we held a digital meeting this week via MS Teams to get the forum going again.

A good cross section of people attended representing music tutors and providers, venues, music organisations and brass bands.

We had input from Kelsey Jubin, Creative Learning Officer(YMI) at Creative Scotland, who talked to us about current funding opportunities. In summary the funds were the;

Targeted Fund for 20 key national organisations
Small Grants Fund for artist led activities, opening in January 2021
Youth Arts Access fund for individuals and organisations, with a deadline on the 12th of November.

Kelsey also highlighted the Nurturing Talent Fund overseen by Young Scot and a new Hardship Fund opening on the 26th of October. This was open to musicians, craft makers and visual artists and Kelsey suggested visiting the Help Musicians website for more details. https://www.helpmusicians.org.uk/

See this post for more details about these funds.

Mae Murray from MEPG (Music Education Partnership Group), talked about its priorities and the new activities it was undertaking. Its primary roles were to be an advocate for music education, increase opportunities and reduce inequalities, bring together music educators and relevant organisations and to support the sector through training and advice.

Mae highlighted a new report, to be released shortly, about the levels of aerosol release from singing and instrument playing. MEPG also runs a very active youth Forum which is led by the young people.

During lockdown MEPG ran several digital projects including Doorstep Samba, Over the Rainbow, and the Hey Jude, Sunday sessions. Mae then introduced the training sessions that MEPG are going to be delivering over the next few months and details of these will be sent out in a further email. They are all available through Eventbrite and on the new MEPG website www.wemakemusicscotland.org.

Thanks for everyone’s input and we will keep you posted about the next meeting.

January 16, 2020January 16, 2020

YMI Impact report 207/18

YMI Impact Report 2017 /18

The end of project report for the YMI year 2018/819 has just been released. It explores the work of all the funds strands, highlight that during that year at least 240,000 young people took part in YMI activity. This includes at least 195,000 in school based activity and at least 45,000 in out of school activity.

For this year there was a 10% cut in the overall budgets allocated, which led to a 3% drop in participation numbers and the numbers of hours delivered also reduced slightly.

Despite this YMI’s impact remained very strong and the report is filled with positive developments and learning experiences. The final section makes some with some realistic and positive points for consideration.

Below is the document

YMI-Impact-Report-2017.18

November 29, 2019December 6, 2019

YMI Access Fund and Strengthening Youth Music Fund

Creative Scotland have launched the 2019/20 funding round for the community based YMI Access to Music-Making and Strengthening Youth Music Funds.

You can read our post about the three parts of the YMI fund here.

The application deadline is very short, the 13th January, but both funds are worth looking at. Below are the summaries of the two funds.

Access to Music-Making fund supports access to high-quality music-making opportunities for young people aged 0-25 years outwith school time. It is open to organisations and individuals based in Scotland or who are delivering programmes within Scotland, with grants between £1k – £40k for up to two years.

Strengthening Youth Music fund is to improve the youth music sector infrastructure and the services that organisers offer. Supporting strategic action, research or training that will strengthen the youth music sector in Scotland. It is not to support project delivery directly with young people. Both organisations and individuals can apply, with grants between £1k – £20k for up to two years. You need to be based in Scotland or delivering programmes within Scotland.

For more details and forms visit the Creative Scotland website.