For the second consecutive year Macclesfield Youth Brass Band has been awarded a special award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to the Community’ and a cheque for £500 by sponsors of the National Youth Brass Band Championships, The Co-operative Group.

Co-operative Award

The award was open to all 34 participating bands competing at the Championships which were held at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester last week.

Many of the bands do fantastic work in their local communities but Macclesfield stood out as an organisation that pushes all its traditional boundaries and looks for new and innovative ways to serve the communityCo-opertaive Group

Well deserved

Ian Mason, Director of The Co-operative Group, commented: "Many congratulations to Macclesfield Youth Band for their well-deserved achievement. Many of the bands do fantastic work in their local communities but Macclesfield stood out as an organisation that pushes all its traditional boundaries and looks for new and innovative ways to serve the community."

Wide variety

The projects that impressed the panel of judges included the band’s commitment to supporting children with a wide variety of special needs.

That included learning to play an instrument, the introduction of a scheme to provide alto trombones to enable younger children to take up the trombone, the band’s support of Jessie’s Fund, a charity which provides music therapy for seriously ill children and the band’s contributions to the Martyn Donaldson Trust, a local charity, which ships musical instruments to Kenya for use by children in a school in Nairobi.