Brass at the Castle blog

Over the weekend of the 13th-14th July, bands from across Cumbria gathered at the grounds of historic Lowther Castle for a weekend long festival of brass. The festival, organised by Drum and Brass, has been over a year in the making and our CEO, Julie Hoggarth, put in a huge amount of effort to pull this off. Despite the typical Cumbrian weather the event went off without a hitch. The bands played their hearts out and entertained the audience with some beautiful music. But entertainment wasn’t the main focus of the weekend, what we really wanted to achieve was to inspire people to have a go at an instrument themselves and maybe leave with the motivation to join their local band. Have a go workshops saw guests encouraged to pick up an instrument and try making some music for themselves. Blue Jam Street beats, a samba group from Penrith, encouraged audience members to be a part of the performance by giving out various percussive instruments. Kirkby Stephen Silver Band beginners groups led an interactive family fun performance on the Sunday which saw the band joined by a whole host of young people on cornets and trombones, They merrily blasted along with family favourites such as ‘Old McDonald’ and ‘Chitty Bang Bang’ while the audience were encouraged to sing along and perform the actions to the songs. It’s worth mentioning that as well as being able to enjoy the lovely music, attendees were kept well fed with the delicious scones baked by a dedicated group of volunteers.

We even had ITV news in attendance- they stayed for the day on Saturday and a lovely piece was aired on Border TV’s ‘Lookaround’ programme the following Monday, which was fantastic exposure highlighting the event’s intentions to bring brass to a wider audience.

Special thanks should be given to our team of volunteers who worked tirelessly across the weekend and who lent their baking skills so no-one went hungry, to Lowther Castle for hosting the event, to all our sponsors and Westmorland and Furness Council and Arts Council England for their support, and of course to all of the musicians who put in so much hard work to entertain us all.