Target reached!
With extra money we'll be bale to get more group music making sessions going, more q...
Help us to celebrate Christmas in our community
Amersham, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Despite lockdown we are bringing Christmas cheer to local people. We are offering carols on demand to help us re-start rehearsals in 2021.
There's nothing more traditional than a Brass Band at Christmas, and we love to bring Christmas cheer to our local community. Like many other bands around the country we rely on donations at Christmas to support the band through the year. However, due to lock-down, we can't hold our usual Community Christmas Concert and our caroling season is going to be very different this year.
This Christmas we are taking a new approach, offering socially distanced carols with small numbers of band members, who will play outside your home to order through Crowdfunding!** We can also send you a copy of our Christmas CD, recorded last year.
** if that's not possible due to lock-down then we can record your favourite carol and/or a special Birthday wish and send it to you!
We would like to thank our community for supporting our project to build a new bandroom, which is now complete and ready for use. We hope to be able to start in rehearsals in the new building in January.
Amersham Band is part of a national initiative launched by Brass Bands England to save the many UK brass bands who are struggling to survive through the COVID-19 pandemic. Brass bands are a core of their local community, and many risk disappearing altogether without your help.
Why are we crowdfunding?
We have been unable to rehearse together, nor provide group teaching since March. Making music in a group is such an important activity, bringing joy to the community as a whole and enhancing wellbeing for players and audiences alike. Our new music bandroom is now finished but we can't use it until we create a COVID-safe environment. We are raising money to fit out the bandroom and to enable us to start music making early in 2021.
About Amersham Band
Amersham Band is a Brass Band with over 110 members. We run four bands for elementary, intermediate and advanced level players. Our group teaching programme for beginners has attracted many new players, mostly young people, who benefit from the experience of playing music in a group. As well as musical skills, this also teaches teamwork, perseverance and self-confidence and is a source of social support. The band provides instruments on loan and has a bursary fund to support those who are financially disadvantaged.
Visit our website for more information about the band.
Participation in arts and culture contributes to community cohesion and reduces social exclusion and isolation. The band brings people together in sharing music; in 2019 the band played at 34 separate local events, the majority being free of charge.
The band wants to extend the accessibility of learning music throughout the local community. We have ambitious plans for further growth including establishing a new Youth Band and launching a Brass Academy for teaching. To do all this we have built a new purpose designed, accessible rehearsal facility.
Our members come together in group music making at weekly rehearsals, teaching sessions and at public performances. All of these activities have ceased due to the coronavirus restrictions and our income stream from subscriptions and performance fees has dried up. For young people this is a significant disruption to their learning and for all ages this has potential mental health impacts.
About Save Our Brass Bands
Brass bands exist in every corner of the UK, with over 30,000 people of all ages and standards taking part in weekly activity – rehearsing, performing and providing entertainment for their local community.
But we risk losing this forever.
Brass Bands saw their main source of income disappear in an instant when they ceased being able to perform in March in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Months later, we still don’t know when normal performances will be able to take place. A significant loss in income over the Summer months, paired with necessary expenditure needed to make rehearsal spaces Covid compliant means that many Brass Bands are in a perilous financial situation.
Without urgent support, we could lose our nation’s amazing Brass Bands. Please help us to make sure they survive this crisis and will be there to be enjoyed by future generations.
#SaveOurBrassBands
Please donate, share this page widely and do what you can to help us to make sure our Brass Bands survive this crisis.
This project successfully funded on 26th December 2020