Editorial ~ 2008: February

This month we give our opinion on the deserving poor; Entry fees and time and dates.

The deserving poor?

The news that Barnsley MP Geoff Ellis is bravely trying to get the Government to relax its cultural purse strings towards brass bands should be applauded.  It will of course end in failure.

For a movement so reluctant to shed many of its Victorian anachronisms to drag itself into the 21st Century, using a very Dickensian argument of being the ‘deserving poor’ will cut no ice. It’s the Oliver Twist approach to asking for ‘more’ money.
 
Over the past decade brass bands have done very well out of lottery funding as well as many other quango inspired avenues of financial help: New instruments, uniforms, music commissions, artistic festivals and events, youth bands and even band rooms have all been funded to a huge number of bands the length and breadth of the country. No one complained at the sums, or the relative ease in which the applications were shunted through year after year.

This Government can hold its head up high when pressed on its commitment to the brass band community, although the very weakness in the way in which it went about helping it was that it encouraged individual bands, and not a national organisation that represents them, to apply for the money. The result was a free for all that couldn’t last forever and was in many cases was quite shamelessly abused by the applicants.

Now we are back for more, but what do we want the money for? More instruments, more uniforms, more commitments to music centres and youth bands that never get off the ground? 

No. What we should be asking for is for money to help fund a national body that represents all bands interests.

The problem of course is that there is no real appetite, or commitment, from the bands or the BFBB (the putative national body), to put forward a coherent strategy to show how that funding could be used with real long term aims and objectives.

Why should the Government give money to an organisation that is not fully representative of its movement and whose members (and the majority of bands that are not) are totally unwilling to help partially fund adequately in the first place?

Until we sort that out, doing an Oliver Twist impression may be touching, but it will always end in tears.  

What do you think?
Send an email to: comments@4barsrest.com      

Entry fees

Ever since there has been brass band contests there has been entry fees levied upon the competitors by organisers and promoters to compete in them.

It is seen as something of a necessity, as well as a fairly democratic way in which contests can have the working capital to help make them run. The money is used to meet the expenses of engaging an adjudicator, pay for the hiring of a hall, buying the trophies and making sure the helpers and officials get a cup of tea and an Eccles cake for sitting for a full day processing registration cards.

It is also a form of investment too – ensuring the continued survival of the contest as well as providing their contribution to the prize money fund, from which, if successful, they could get back more than they put in. 

Bands are happy doing this – especially when they know what their money is being spent on, and can through local band associations and regional committees have some say in the matter.

However, some promoters are now starting to ask the bands to dig ever deeper into their pockets to provide them with this working capital – to a point that entry fees to some contests this year will be anything between £150 - £200 per band - regardless of which section they are in.

When some privately run contests this year could raise anything between £4,000 and £12,800 from the bands themselves by doing this, you do start to wonder if that is any longer fair and equitable, or bears any relation to the actual running costs of the events themselves.

Perhaps we should ask these promoters where the money goes, especially when you start working out exactly just how much it costs a band to go to a contest in the first place – from conductor’s fees to paying for the bus and even entry tickets to the contest itself for the players?

If you give someone £200 shouldn’t you be entitled to be shown what became of it? 

Perhaps bands are too trusting, or perhaps some promoters are starting to use them as an easy form of money making. 

What do you think?
Send an email to: comments@4barsrest.com      

Time and dates 

Given that the brass band movement is made up of so many varied constituent parts, you can’t help but wonder why they find it so difficult to actually speak to each other.

The Regional Committees do a wonderful job, yet how come we have reached a situation where there are five regional contests being held on the same weekend in March this year?

So too contest promoters. In May there will be the Europeans, Spring Festival and Masters all in a three week spell  - and if you are a Welsh band the one week break between Blackpool and Cambridge is filled with the Ebbw Vale contest.

It even happens with the associations of brass band adjudicators and brass band conductors. The last weekend of 2007 saw the judges have their AGM, whilst a couple of weeks later the conductors did the same, this time in Bolton on the same weekend as the RNCM Festival of Brass.

If only someone had perhaps bothered to pick up the phone and try and organise things a bit better. And you wonder why the movement finds it so hard to get itself properly organised?

What do you think?
Send an email to: comments@4barsrest.com     

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