Hi all, I am Mark Bick, Music Development worker for the Forest of Dean. My background is in community music and youthwork, with a lot of programme development and training thrown in. I set up Forest of Dean Music Makers 8 years ago and continue to work for them freelance. See www.fdmm.org.uk for more info. I lead two courses every year for Birmingham and other West Midlands Music services to help them get musicians from more diverse backgrounds into thier workforce and lead other training for community musicians with MusicLeader West Midlands and other organisations. My big aim for this the Music Forum work in the Forest is to try and get longer term solutions to the issues of gigs for young bands, including encouraging the various organisations to work together. What have I been up to? 25th April was persauded to be be judge for “Forest Factor” a joint talent competion set up by Newent, Lakers and Dene Magna secondary schools at Royal Forest of Dean College. Another judge dropped out, so I dragged my wife, Sarah along as well (she was a music teacher and is just finishing training to be a vicar!). We were dreading having to judge between people, but actually it was a great atmosphere. Each school had held heats so the standards were very high, the level of enthusiasm and audience support was great. There were 12 acts, including solo singers, bands, and a couple of non-musical acts. Our fellow judge was Pete Assirati, a proffessional musician who teaches guitar at Lakers. In the end we all agreed on the top three, we gave individual positive feedback to all the acts and discovered afterwards that we had managed to pick one act from each of the schools. Conversations afterwards confirmed the need for more gigging opportunties for young bands and also issues like the lack of vocal teachers with knowlege and experience of popular styles. I have made plans to visit each of the schools on lunch time to meet young musicians and hear thier views. Since then I have had various meetings and conversations on the issues of gigs - will update soon. Is anyone doing similar work in other areas? Are people interested in organising exchange gigs with young bands?