Last night (31st August) the BBL Executive held another productive Zoom meeting and discussed a variety of topics including the following:

COVID-19
The BBL are still working with the Arts Council NI and the Department for Communities to try and get bands back to rehearsing. For the moment in Northern Ireland, our advice remains the same as that published 05 August 2020 (http://artscouncil-ni.org/news/arts-council-publishes-manual-for-the-safe-reopening-of-venues) which states:

“Non-professionals should currently not engage in singing or playing wind and brass instruments with other people given these activities pose a potentially higher risk of transmission and whilst research is ongoing”

As stated previously, we will let you know as soon as anything changes.

Band Questionnaire
Thank you very much to everyone who has completed the questionnaire we sent out at the end of July.  We will be collating the results into a more user friendly format over the next few days.  If we have  any follow up questions, we will get in contact with you.  We hope to be able to present the results to you all at the next delegate meeting.  We have had 25 responses so far which is fantastic!

If your band still hasn’t had a chance to complete it, we would still love to hear from you!  The questionnaire will remain open for the foreseeable.  There may just be a slight delay in collating your answers with all the other’s. You can find a link to the questionnaire and details on how to complete it on our website here https://brassbandsni.org/2020/07/26/band-questionaire-for-affiliated-and-unaffiliated-bands/

Delegate Meetings
We have scheduled the following dates and times for the remaining delegate meetings during 2020:

Friday 2nd October @ 8pm
Friday 6th November @ 8pm
Friday 4th December @ 8pm – AGM

These will all be held online on Zoom.  

Please can you let us know by Friday 18^th September if you will be attending the October meeting. We will then forward on the minutes of the last BBL meeting and an agenda with the details of the Zoom meeting.  To this end, we would ask that if anyone has any points which they would like to raise for discussion, please get in contact prior to Friday 18th September so that they can be included on the agenda. 

We would like to remind affiliated bands that although each band may only have one vote at the meeting that they can have up to three representatives attend. 

As these are exceptional times we would like to continue to invite non-affiliated bands to send one representative to the meeting.  This representative would be unable to vote but would be able to express their opinions on any of the discussion points.

We anticipate that the main points discussed in the next meetings will relate to COVID-19 and the results of the band questionnaire.

Online Competition
As discussed at our delegate meeting in June, we are intending to run an online competition for all brass banders in Northern Ireland.  At the moment due to the restrictions surrounding COVID-19, we currently plan it to mainly be a solo competition.  We plan for entries received to go live on our Facebook page on Saturday 28th November (the date that the Festival of Brass should have been held).  At the moment we are still working out all the finer details and hope to be in touch soon with the finalised plans. 

Other information1.  If any of you are running any events and would like these publicised on our Facebook page, please just send us a message and we will be happy to share it.  
2.  The minutes of the delegate meetings up to the end of 2019 are available on our website if anyone would like to view them.  We are working on getting the 2020 ones uploaded too https://brassbandsni.org/minutes/
3. Band Map – we are still looking for more bands to submit their information for the Band Map on our website. If you would like your band added please get in touch! https://brassbandsni.org/map/

As ever, if you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch!