Too busy to Blog!

Attended SW Music Forum meeting in Exeter at end of Oct on behalf of George as he was not available.  Lots of interesting stuff bubbling up around the region.

Various meetings, telephone discussions and visits to venues to try and make progress on getting regular good quality youth gigs in the Forest.  Included meeting Forest Youth Forum, the Youth Forum exec & Music Makers group of young people.  Also discussed planned Youth Music Funding bid to be submitted by GMF. Meeting about Forest gigs is planned for 7.30pm Tuesday 19th Jan.

Owen Adams, who has been getting on with organising loads of gigs on an informal basis has also got out a Forest Compilation double CD in collaboration with GMF and various other people - copies have disapeared very fast - George Moorey has a few, I only have one left.

I helped put together some information on on the informal sector for the Gloucestershire Local Authority Music Plan revision which was submitted to the Music Manifesto National Coordinator by Gloucestershire Music in December.

Big job recently has been a £50K funding bid in collaboration with Forest of Dean Music Makers and various other organisations for singing work with looked after children.  This was an invited tender from Sing Up  www.singup.org.  Submitted last Monday, we will hear later in January. If successful it will involve work across Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, aiming to create a long term increase in access to singing activities for looked after children.

I have been involved in discussing how we can work together to put on some good quality training on community music work - there are quite a few people in the Forest area wanting this training and others in other areas. 

Now about to start work on another invited bid for music mentors to work with young people aged up to 25.