Brewood Music Festival will take place on 12-15th July 2018 engaging with all our local community through musical workshops and local talent showcases, and providing quality live music of all genres. Events on Thursday, Friday, Saturday lunchtime and all day Sunday are provided free of charge. Brewood Middle School is providing a venue and focus groups of children will be involved in the festival - the programme, the events, the delivery, giving the school an opportunity to provide experiences and activities to the children that they may not otherwise have and provide a focus for music lessons, as well as before and after school clubs before and after the festival. Summer holiday activities and events will also be driven by this involvement. Our Church opens the festival by a choral evening with a high profile choir. Local pubs, club and community venues will provide a free of charge eclectic programme of quality original music.

What we'll deliver:

• Deliver quality music festival which is accessible to all
• Enhance our local community promoting real cohesion for all ages
• Provide learning opportunities for our children
• Offer opportunities for musical development in a wide genre

Why it's a great idea:

Brewood is a rural community with poor transport link and little accessible and affordable opportunity for our members to celebrate and enjoy life together. Our young people are often vilified for 'hanging around the streets' as there is little else for them to do. Families and lone parents face barriers to participation such as expense, accessibility and travel leading to isolation, lack of involvement and loneliness. The music festival is ostensibly free of charge and organised by volunteers through a not-for-profit committee providing opportunities for all our community to access high quality music, through attendance at the festival itself, but also through professional workshops, after school and holiday clubs. Our project will build and strengthen cohesive communities by enabling our older community to celebrate and enjoy events and activities alongside young people and the rest of our community in a positive environment forging relationships and mutual respect in our village.

Steps to get it done:

Making and participating in music events is fun, uses different skills to those employed in the rest of daily life, is relaxing and stress-busting, and makes you feel better about yourself. In scientific terms, there is a growing body of research which shows that this can amount to better physical and mental health: music really is good for you. Everyone can enjoy music, from a two-year-old to a 90-year-old, whether rich or poor, disabled or not. Brewood Music Festival will help bring communities together across generations, social classes, income brackets, disabled and not disabled. An obvious benefit of that is that it reduces loneliness and social exclusion, which are a very real cost to local services. Music events and festivals can also help generate pride in a place and community, helping to transform an area into somewhere people want to live and feel safe and connected in.