Open-top bus brings festive cheer to our communities
It has been a very lean time for brass bands since regulations about the Covid epidemic were introduced, but Alan Bourne, musical director of RAF St Athan Voluntary Band, has managed to introduce a new aspect to banding. If the audience can’t attend band concerts, then the band will attend to the audience. Here is Alan’s tale...
JUMPING on the bandwagon... or, to be more precise, jumping on the open top bus!
No-one in the banding world was terribly surprised to find that, in a year when all our contests, concerts and regular engagements have been cancelled, Christmas was looking like a very quiet affair.
This, for the RAF St Athan Voluntary Band which, as one of the country’s busiest working brass band (approximately 80 engagements each year, nearly thirty of them in December) wasn’t looking to be a very Happy Christmas!
The band, very much due to a core of intrepid retired folk, students and workers with holidays to spare would play at care homes, carol services, school concerts, day centres, council offices and pensioners’ parties and lunches – often with not many more than a quintet, then they’d be joined in the evening and on weekends by the full band for Church Concerts, Carol Services and Santa Parades.
You’ll notice the absence of ‘carolling’ in the list – we made the decision many years ago to concentrate our efforts playing shorter sessions (largly indoors), but to attend more varied locations.
Last year we attended the local Amelia Trust
Farm for a Cradle Service – the rain hammered down and we ended up in a barn with cows, sheep, goats, pigs and all the resulting smells – it was a tough one for deep-breathing that day!
The inevitable question was raised – what ccould we do to save Christmas 2020?
Working closely within the Welsh Government Covid-19 restrictions, our band was allowed to perform indoors with a maximum of 15 players or outdoors with a maximuim of 30.
But still, we could not find a way for our audience to safely socially distance themselves and still get to see the band.
What if, we thought, we take the concerts to the people?
Obviously the logistics of performing a dozen short concerts, setting up, breaking down and travelling etc, would take forever – so a moving stage, the back of a lorry or better still – the top deck of an open bus!
A little research put us in touch with the Bath Bus Company – who also have an office in Cardiff and run the hop-on, hop-off sightseeing tours – and after a year where most of their services were cancelled and staff furloughed, they had an appropriate vehicle available for us.
Our next challenge was how to finance it – this was never meant to be a fundraising exercise, but like all bands, our annual funding stream had completely dried up.
We could not afford for it to cost us money!
Luckily, most of our local town and community councils agreed and found the funds to pay the hire charges for our bus and it was all systems go.
We may not have the fabulous halls and churches, standing ovations and rapturous singing of usual years, but we’ll be out playing, taking our music to the people and flying the flag not only for the Royal Air Force, but also for the resilience of Brass Bands so – Happy Christmas all!