Cross Trust Covid Recovery Fund

For Scots’ born residents in Perth & Kinross Council, who may be struggling financially with their courses or projects because of Covid-19 restrictions, your attention is drawn to the Cross Trust Covid Recovery Fund.

There is a Cross Trust Covid Recovery Fund set up from a grant from the Gannochy Trust Covid-19 Recovery & Renewal Grant, a generous initiative set up to help charities working in the Perth & Kinross area. 

The Cross Trust proposes to provide financial support to young people living in the area towards the cost of University or College courses or other studies.  Many young folk have been unable to obtain part-time work because of the Coronavirus restrictions and had been planning to manage their finances by part-time earnings. 

Funds are limited and applications for an award will only be considered if applicants can demonstrate they are of outstanding merit and that their financial circumstances have been affected by Covid-19.

Applications can be made for the attention of Paul R McGregor, McCash & Hunter LLP, Secretaries to the Cross Trust, 25 South Methven Street, Perth PH1 5PE via the Cross Trust website (www.thecrosstrust.org.uk).

DEADLINE EXTENDED FOR COVID-19 RECOVERY & RENEWAL FUND!

There are still some funds available and the deadline for applications has been extended to 26 February 2021 !

Event Cancellations

At the Foundation’s Trustees’ meeting on Tuesday 25th August 2020, we regrettably took the decision to cancel our 2 forthcoming fundraising events – the IMS Staff Tutor Concert planned for 13th September 2020, and our popular Quiz Night which was planned for 17th September.

Although the Trustees took these decisions, we were guided by the two venues who had notified us that, due to current restrictions regarding large gatherings, they weren’t going to be able to allow us to hold these events. Whilst this is very sad news, I am sure that you will agree that the decision of both the venues and ourselves are the right ones at this time.

We plan to reschedule these events for late Spring/early Summer 2021 when we hope that restrictions will be much more relaxed (or better still, non existent) and we are all back to as normal a way of living our lives as we can be. We will keep you posted via our next six monthly newsletter as regards dates so that you can put them in your diary, and hopefully you will be able to come along and support our continuing efforts to “Let Our Children Play”.

As a consequence of these decisions, the next fundraising event we still have in the diary is our annual concert by IMS central groups bands/orchestras, which is currently planned for Wednesday 3rd March 2021 in the North Inch Community Campus.  At this time, we are hoping that this event can go ahead given that it is more than 6 months away, but we will of course, again be guided by any restrictions still in place at that time, plus the views of the staff of the Instrumental Music Service, as it is not yet clear when Central Groups will be able to begin rehearsing.

Thank you all for your continuing support of the work of the Foundation in supporting our young musicians from across Perth & Kinross.

Sponsored cycle for PKMF and Perthshire Brass – a tribute to George Annan Snr.

On 16-17th May 2020, supporters of PKMF are cycling from Perth to Ecclefechan to raise funds for Perthshire Brass and Perth & Kinross Music Foundation, and to honour the founder of both groups, George Annan Snr, who passed away last year.

PKMF’s Chairperson, Mrs Mhairi Mackinnon said, “We chose Ecclefechan because of George’s saying “a crotchet is the same length in Perth, Scone, or Ecclefechan” when teaching youngsters how to play brass music.”

“The route takes us 120 miles over 2 days, with an overnight in Lanark.”

Perthshire Brass was formed in 1978 by George Annan Snr (as Perthshire Youth Brass) to enable youngsters in the area to learn a brass instrument and play in a band together. The band has evolved over the years to new have both a youth band and senior band. They now participate in numerous competitions all over the country, as well as many concerts every year in the local area. The band also goes on tour every couple of years to Perth’s twin cities (Aschaffenburg, Germany and Bydgoszcz, Poland most recently). Any funds raised from this venture will go towards the continued development of young players in both the youth and senior bands as well aiding the running of both bands.

The Perth and Kinross Music Foundation are a registered charity that was founded in 1997. (One of the founder members was George Annan senior). They are a small group but have big ambitions with the main aim being ‘to let our children play!’

They help between 75 and 100 pupils annually whose parents cannot afford to pay for their music tuition. This allows them to continue learning through their lessons and also to play in Central Groups. Playing a musical instrument let’s children grow in confidence, learn self discipline and life enhancing skills and above all, experience the joy of music making.

If you would like to sponsor us- please go to our JUST GIVING page.

Youth Philanthropy Initiative

Posted by Joanne Robertson on Thursday, 17 October 2019

Thanks to four young friends who took part in the Youth Philanthropy Initiative at school this term, each group chose a charity that they would like to support and put together a presentation to try and win £3000 for their chosen charity – the Perth and Kinross Music Foundation.

Proud mum, Joanne Robertson, said, “The four kids put together this video to explain what music means to them and most importantly recognised how privileged they are at their school. This presentation wasn’t about them, it was genuine and close to their hearts.”

“Although they made it through to the finals, they didn’t win BUT have come away thinking about how they can help in the future.”

On behalf of the Perth and Kinross Music Foundation, Mr Gordon Murch, thanked the youngsters for speaking up on behalf of the charity.

“Their efforts have gone far to demonstrate the wide public support for our work and to prove the huge values to be uncovered from learning to play a musical instrument.”

Credit to their young composer and his pal on guitar!.

Quiz success

PKMF held a fundraising Quiz Night on Tuesday 17 September 2019 in the Civil Service Club, Perth.  Joint Quiz Masters for the evening were Jason Blythe and Dave Findlay who had set some very challenging, but fun, questions.  13 teams took part and all participants who made a comment at the end of the evening expressed how much they had enjoyed themselves.  A raffle was also held and the final proceeds to the Foundation funds after all expenses had been settled was £545. 

The quiz was won by a team calling themselves “The B Side” with an extremely high score of 82 out of a possible 100.  The evening was sponsored by Errochty Financial Services, a local company, which sponsored the cost of hiring the venue.  The Committee will review how the evening went at its next meeting and will hopefully choose to organise another Quiz Night evening in the future.