Grant Award
Budleigh Music Festival has been awarded a valuable grant from the Postcode Local Trust, a grant-giving charity funded entirely by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
The money will be used to enable more members of the community to attend events at the Festival, and to engage in music related activities. The Festival is particularly keen to attract schools, charities, care homes and marginalised members of the community to its eight-day event which takes place in Budleigh Salterton every July.
The grant will allow Budleigh Music Festival to build upon the work already achieved by the Festival Committee, attracting a wide variety of attendees to its events which form part of the annual Music Festival. This year’s Festival began with a community choral workshop in which children from three local schools took part along with 90 local choral enthusiasts. Care home residents attended a tea dance, with refreshments provided by Launchpad, a local organisation providing support to adults with learning difficulties and local Ballroom dancing enthusiasts provided show-dances. An imaginative space for creative musical play was created to attract young families to explore music with their children.
Chair of the Festival committee, Kate Somerby, says that the ethos of the Festival is to encourage as many people as possible to enjoy music, regardless of whether they have any musical experience or prior knowledge.
She added: “Our ethos at Budleigh Music Festival is to throw open the doors and to ensure that everybody feels welcome here, regardless of whether they know much about music or not. This fund will enable us to continue to do that, and to reach even more people in our community who would not otherwise feel able to join in.”
Renowned jazz singer Jacqui Dankworth performed at this year’s Festival, alongside a British Sign Language interpreter so that members of the local deaf community could attend the concert. In addition, students at a nearby secondary school were given free tickets to a trombone quartet concert and benefitted from the opportunity to meet the musicians afterwards.
The Postcode Local Trust said that the Budleigh Music Festival is exactly the sort of organisation that deserves funding such as this.
Ryan Mackie, deputy head of charities at People’s Postcode Lottery said: “The opportunity for everyone to experience live music is really important and I am delighted that funds raised by players of People’s Postcode Lottery will enable the Budleigh Music Festival to engage with even more members of the community.”
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