Whilst colleagues at Perth & Kinross Council Education & Childrens Services have confirmedthat all PKC music tuition fees were formally abolished as of August 2022, this matter has not yet been passed into legislation by the Scottish Parliament, so there is still the possibility of them being reinstated by a future Scottish Government – of whatever political hue!
That said, Perth & Kinross Council (PKC) decided in February 2024, when setting their budget for 2024-2026, to re-introduce fees for certain aspects of the Instrumental Music Service (IMS) activities – i.e. attendance at Central Groups/Orchestras and Music Camps, with an income target of £48,000 per annum being set.
They also agreed to reduce the staffing levels in the Service by 3.5 full time equivalent staff thus saving £199,000 over the next 3 years. Due to the rural/urban nature of provision across Perth & Kinross, several members of staff work part time in order the achieve the most flexible provision of instrumental tuition across the whole Council area. This means that effectively, there could be as many as 10 jobs lost over the next 3 years to achieve these savings…
Welcome to the 9th issue of Perth & Kinross Music Foundation’s 6 monthly Newsletter.
The Trustees hope that you and your families are all well, and have steered clear of the dreaded Covid over the last few months as life has started to get back to something more like normal?
In this issue, we bring you up to date with what we have been up to over the last 6 months, and also give you some information on what we plan to do in the future.
What have we been up to over the last 6 months?
As was set out in our last newletter, the Scottish Government policy change with regard to free music tuition in state schools which was announced last summer, changed how the charity would have to operate given that we were set up to provide funds for music tuiton fees (and associated costs) which financially challenged families had difficualty in paying.
Since the the Scottish Government announcement last year, the Trustees have continued to support the Instrumental Music Service, whilst remaining within the terms of our OSCR approved constitution. To that end, we agreed with Allan Young (IMS Co-ordinator) to make available a grant to his service of up to £20,000 to be spent on additional instruments, equipment, and other resources on order to support the team’s efforts to re-estabish the level of service that they provide to pre-pandemic levels, and thus to encourage more young people to want to learn to play a musical instrument…
At the Foundation’s Trustees’ meeting on Tuesday 25th August 2020, we regrettably took the decision to cancel our 2 forthcoming fundraising events – the IMS Staff Tutor Concert planned for 13th September 2020, and our popular Quiz Night which was planned for 17th September.
Although the Trustees took these decisions, we were guided by the two venues who had notified us that, due to current restrictions regarding large gatherings, they weren’t going to be able to allow us to hold these events. Whilst this is very sad news, I am sure that you will agree that the decision of both the venues and ourselves are the right ones at this time.
We plan to reschedule these events for late Spring/early Summer 2021 when we hope that restrictions will be much more relaxed (or better still, non existent) and we are all back to as normal a way of living our lives as we can be. We will keep you posted via our next six monthly newsletter as regards dates so that you can put them in your diary, and hopefully you will be able to come along and support our continuing efforts to “Let Our Children Play”.
As a consequence of these decisions, the next fundraising event we still have in the diary is our annual concert by IMS central groups bands/orchestras, which is currently planned for Wednesday 3rd March 2021 in the North Inch Community Campus. At this time, we are hoping that this event can go ahead given that it is more than 6 months away, but we will of course, again be guided by any restrictions still in place at that time, plus the views of the staff of the Instrumental Music Service, as it is not yet clear when Central Groups will be able to begin rehearsing.
Thank you all for your continuing support of the work of the Foundation in supporting our young musicians from across Perth & Kinross.
Thanks to four young friends who took part in the Youth Philanthropy Initiative at school this term, each group chose a charity that they would like to support and put together a presentation to try and win £3000 for their chosen charity – the Perth and Kinross Music Foundation.
Proud mum, Joanne Robertson, said, “The four kids put together this video to explain what music means to them and most importantly recognised how privileged they are at their school. This presentation wasn’t about them, it was genuine and close to their hearts.”
“Although they made it through to the finals, they didn’t win BUT have come away thinking about how they can help in the future.”
On behalf of the Perth and Kinross Music Foundation, Mr Gordon Murch, thanked the youngsters for speaking up on behalf of the charity.
“Their efforts have gone far to demonstrate the wide public support for our work and to prove the huge values to be uncovered from learning to play a musical instrument.”
Credit to their young composer and his pal on guitar!.
PKMF held a fundraising Quiz Night on Tuesday 17 September 2019 in the Civil Service Club, Perth. Joint Quiz Masters for the evening were Jason Blythe and Dave Findlay who had set some very challenging, but fun, questions. 13 teams took part and all participants who made a comment at the end of the evening expressed how much they had enjoyed themselves. A raffle was also held and the final proceeds to the Foundation funds after all expenses had been settled was £545.
The quiz was won by a team calling themselves “The B Side” with an extremely high score of 82 out of a possible 100. The evening was sponsored by Errochty Financial Services, a local company, which sponsored the cost of hiring the venue. The Committee will review how the evening went at its next meeting and will hopefully choose to organise another Quiz Night evening in the future.
Picture shows Ola Stanton of Perth Youth Orchestra, Jonathan Cammidge, PCOG Treasurer and Mhairi MacKinnon from Perth and Kinross Music Foundation, at the party. Picture credit – Mhairi Edwards.
Perth City Operatic Group will now cease to exist, and their leftover funds have been donated to youth music charities in the area.
The Perth City Operatic Group has raised more than £10,000 for charities during its final farewell party.
The company was forced to wrap up their performances after 55 years due to dwindling attendance numbers.
Money raised from the event at the Tulloch Institute at the weekend
will be evenly split to give three charities supporting young musicians
£3,500 each.
Holly Cammidge, of the Perth City Operatic Group, said the last performance was bittersweet. “It was a sad occasion but it was one we wanted to celebrate,” she said.
“It was a really nice evening.We made our donations to three charities to distribute the money in our account.
The three charities were chosen by members of the group themselves. They decided to donate the money to Perth Youth Orchestra, the Perth and Kinross Music Foundation and the Young Musicians Parents Association.
On choosing the charities, Ms Cammidge said: “It was decided at that we wanted to support up and coming musicians.
“All of our productions have had a live orchestra and we wouldn’t
have managed without one, so we feel that this is giving something
back.”
The opera group had to cancel its final show last autumn and was
unable to form a committee at its annual general meeting in the spring.
They had previously put on a major show once a year but the pressures
of doing this have become too great for the remaining organisers of the
group.
Ms Cammidge said: “We had also recently tried to put on a production
at Perth Theatre, like our sister organisation Perth Amateur Operatic
Society have managed, but it proved too expensive.
“At our meeting in March, we couldn’t get enough people to form a committee so the group had to stop.”
On Friday night past members and their families and friends were invited to join the group to celebrate the 55 years of the opera group’s work. As the Perth City Opera Group said its final farewell, they remained grateful to everyone who supported them. Ms Cammidge said: “We would like to thank our audiences and members over the years for their support.
A spokesperson for the operatic group said: “It is with great sadness that we had to announce the closure of Perth City Operatic Group, a charity which has been a part of Perth’s performing arts scene since 1964 and welcomed many audiences over the years.
“Perth City Operatic Group’s AGM was held earlier this year and the final decision was made by its members to close the society. A decline in membership numbers and a lack of interest in the running of the society meant that this decision was forced to comply with the society’s constitution as it can not exist without a committee in place.
According to Perth City Operatic Group’s constitution, their remain funds were distributed among local youth music charities which have been chosen by the membership – including Perth Youth Orchestra and the Perth and Kinross Music Foundation.
“We’d like to thank our audiences and members over the years for their support.”
Responding on behalf of Perth and Kinross Music Foundation, Chairperson Mhairi MacKinnon said, “We are delighted to receive such a great boost to our funds but obviously saddened by the circumstances which sees the end of a great Perth institution.”
