Thank you so much for your support at Kilmarnock Pipe Band. It has been absolutely invaluable to our project and our young people.

Your funding was used to provide hall hire for the year, to enable us to run ‘the 6 o’clock club’ – an extra two hours per week specifically aimed at developing our young players.

During the course of this year the 6 o’clock club has:

• provided 2 hours extra tuition per week specifically for our young people
• provided a full weekend’s intensive tuition specifically for our young people
• been able to deliver focussed individual tuition to ensure we are developing good players, and not allowing them to ‘shape’ as part of the band and pick up bad habits that would hamper their future ambitions
• delivered workshops on band skills
• delivered many hours of 1:1 blowing skills development
• delivered workshops on tuning
• provided tuition on music theory and music writing
• ran sight reading workshops which have made a huge difference in our young people’s ability level, and impacted their ability to learn on their own
• prepared our young people for SCQF level 5 and provided the opportunity to sit the exam
• in the end, 4 young people decided to sit the SCQF Level 5 exam, and they all passed!
• provided the opportunity for our young people to take leadership roles in our feeder programme ‘Epic East Ayrshire Pipe Band Academy’ summer school
• as a band performed in concert at the Palace theatre, where a member of the 6 o’clock club performed a solo
• performed at Cumnock Highland Games where a member of the 6 o’clock club performed a solo
• we ran a CD club where members were able to broaden their knowledge of the traditional music scene by hearing cd’s by pipe bands, solo pipers, trad groups including pipes, and trad groups not including pipes. Prior to the cd club they didn’t know this existed and never listened to bagpipe music!!! Gordon Duncan’s music was of course the first on the list and have remained a favourite of all players
• encouraged them to dream big: aim to make it to grade 1, aim to play with the NYPB and work towards achieving it now
• we were able to encourage our young people to attend an NYPB weekend at Dumfries House
• we attended a piobaireachd workshop by RCS graduate Chris Lee
• we attended 3 Scottish Power Pipe Band practices in the run up to the competition season and the run up to their fantastic pre-worlds concert
• thanks to the SWSPDA we were able to take the 6 o’clock club to the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow to see the NYPB in concert, and 2 members were able to attend the NYPB weekend in Barcaple
• 9 under 25’s competed with us last season, with our highlights being 3rd place in the European Championships and 4th place in the World Championships

There is no way we could have achieved this without your support, and I think you can agree that it has been incredibly beneficial for our young people who’ve had an amazing year in the band.

From everyone at Kilmarnock Pipe Band – thank you for helping make our young people absolutely EPIC!