Welcome to the 9^th 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.