Menai Bridge Band Porthaethwy has won Making Music's 'Green Award'.

Making Music is the membership organisation that represents over 4,000 groups and nearly 230,000 music makers across the UK. It recognised the outstanding efforts of the Anglesey based band in their efforts in improving their sustainability as well as reducing their energy consumption and carbon footprint.

This included the installation of a ventilation heat recovery system to their storage space, upgrading facilities with recycled furniture, adding Infra Red heat panels to their rehearsal space linked to thermostats, and planning for the instillation of solar panels.

Ethos

The move by the Welsh band was based on a post-Covid ethos of musical as well as organisational sustainably — "No Youth band members = No Future for the band" and "What can our band do to help the future for those members too?"

It has seen their Beginner group grow from 6 to over 25 players, gaining an Arts Award Discover qualification along the way, whilst a programme of work on their bandroom (a former chapel built in 1831) is near completion with a solar panel array with 20kwh battery storage system soon to be added.

The band have also improved sustainability with the refurbishment of 17 original National Lottery instruments from the late 1990s all being fully restored by McQueens in Manchester.

Amazing

A band spokesperson told 4BR: "To win this national award for what we've been doing as a community music group has been amazing.

It would not have happened without the advice and support of organisations such as Egin, the National Lottery Community fund, Avanti West Coast Community Improvement fund, the Bernard Sunley Foundation, Arts Council of Wales and Isle of Anglesey Charitable Foundation, plus the companies who have made this happen for us and we must thank them all."

To win this national award for what we've been doing as a community music group has been amazingBand spokesperson

Tree

As part of the prize, the band have chosen to plant the appropriately named Hornbeam tree at the National Forest which spans Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire.

In the other categories of awards, the Lockerley & District Silver Band were nominated in the 'Group of the Year'.