ymi – Making Music

August 4, 2021August 13, 2021

YMI Funding Opportunities

Creative Scotland have announced two new funding streams under the YMI programme , Access to Music Making and Access to Music Making.

The funds are open to all arts organisations and music educationalists and including tutors and freelancers. The funds are not open for applications from schools, PTAs or local authorities

Access to Music Making

The purpose of the fund is to create access to high quality, music-making opportunities for children and young people aged 0-25 years. The fund is now open for applications. and is offering grants between £1-30k for up to 1 year of activity. Creative Scotland will be running a funding support session on 11 August to support potential applicants with the new online application process.

https://www.creativescotland.com/funding/funding-programmes/targeted-funding/youth-music-initiative/access-to-music-making

Strengthening Youth Music

The fund is also open for applications. The purpose of the fund is to improve the youth music sector infrastructure and services on offer for the benefit of children and young people. The fund is also open for applications and supports grants between £1-20k for up to 1 year of activity. Creative Scotland will be running a funding support session on 11 August to support potential applications with the new online process

https://www.creativescotland.com/funding/funding-programmes/targeted-funding/youth-music-initiative/strengthening-youth-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.

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.

November 6, 2019December 6, 2019

Music Appreciation Assembly

Music Appreciation Assembly

Three of the YMI team recently performed songs at an assembly in Earlston Primary schools. The school was running a series of afternoon assemblies bringing in musicians , asking some of the pupils to play their own instruments or listening to music to increase the appreciation and enjoyment of music . the Depute head teacher, Kevin, asked if we could help and Kaela, Jon and Jenni went along in December to play sing and get the pupils up dancing.

It went down well and we hope to help the school invite some other musicians along to inspire the children.