Youth Music charity announces grant awards of £869,000
Music projects for children and young people coping with special educational needs, disabilities, sensory impairment and unemployment set to benefit.
Youth Music has announced grant awards totalling £869,000 under its recently established Fund A programme. This brings the total awarded this year under the national music charity’s refreshed grants programme to £7.69m. Youth Music currently supports almost 400 music-making projects across the country, reaching out to 75,000 children and young people in challenging circumstances every year.
In July 2014, Youth Music announced a restructuring of its funding programme. The charity established new A, B and C funding streams to simplify the application process and diversify its portfolio. Fund A awards allow smaller organisations or smaller projects to apply for grants of up to £30,000 to support life changing music-making activity for disadvantaged children and young people.
The latest Fund A awards saw 35 organisations across England receiving grants ranging from £5,040 to £30,000, 21 (60%) of which are new to Youth Music funding. Music-making projects that were successful in the application process included initiatives for children and young people with special educational needs, disabilities, sensory impairment and a number of projects working with those not in education, employment or training.
Youth Music works carefully throughout its application and funding process to achieve a balanced portfolio and respond to areas of high need. In this latest round of funding, the charity noted that the West Midlands and North East regions were under-represented in the total number of grant applications received. Youth Music is encouraging more organisations from these regions to submit applications for future funding. The closing dates for the next round of Fund A and Fund B applications are 22nd October and 5th November 2015 respectively.
In the latest funding round, Halifax-based organisation Music and the Deaf was awarded a grant of £27,000 to support deaf and hearing-impaired young people in Bradford and Manchester, working with specialist music technology to develop their composition and performance skills.
OpenUp Music, a national organisation working to open up youth orchestras, musical repertoire and musical instruments to young musicians with disabilities was awarded a grant of £26,600 to create and test accessible and affordable instruments that can be played independently using any part of a musician’s body, including their head, feet or eyes.
Barry Farrimond, founder and Technical Director, OpenUp Music says: "We are so excited that Youth Music is supporting OpenUp Music to develop the next generation of accessible musical instruments. For many disabled people, conventional musical instruments can be totally inaccessible because they tend to require dexterous fingers. If you are a budding musician who experiences restricted dexterity or mobility this can present a barrier that no amount of dedication or hard work will traverse."
Matt Griffiths, CEO, Youth Music said: “This is the second round of awards under our Fund A programme and we’re definitely achieving our aim of diversifying our portfolio while making it easier for smaller projects or organisations to access funding. We’re delighted to welcome 21 new organisations into the Youth Music fold. Several grants have been awarded for projects focused on special educational needs and disabilities as we know the benefits of our investment for the young participants involved are enormous. We also continue to encourage our strategic partners, who have been awarded large grants under our Fund C stream, to focus on this area.”
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