History of Scottish Music Centre latest news

A lot of people have said there must be grants available to help towards getting the centre off the ground and indeed after speaking to Creative Scotland I applied for a small research and development grant which I will find out about later this month. Creative Scotland make announcements about grants so you will hear from them first. I had to check just to make sure I could say I had applied ! If successful it will help cover my time and will certainly be very useful. I do also want to be very clear about the focus of the centre which will be to help Scottish bands old and new reach new people. Having “special editions” of albums are great but all they are doing are encouraging established fans to buy from one place rather than another. 

There is a lot that could be done (and currently isn’t being done) to give new bands in particular a better chance while never underestimating how hard things can be these days. Again there are some great bands established in Scotland but little known even in the UK never mind worldwide. This is something I very much have the ability to address through Avalanches’s reputation, 30+ years of contacts, our social media platforms and the interest I know is out there in Scottish music.

As I’ve said before I’ve had discussions with Edinburgh art galleries and museums as there may be some crossover in the future and one specialist fund raiser with ties to the Scottish music scene has expressed an interest in helping in the future but we do need to start moving forward immediately if the target of having the centre established by the end of March 2017 is to be achieved. 

Thanks to everybody who has responded so far about supporting  the centre but I will now need to start being more proactive in raising funds. There are several options open to us and I suspect to some extent we will use them all. More on that very soon. In terms of material for exhibitions there has been a lot of progress and I think I can safely say that won’t be an issue. 

Ideally it would be great to have a central space in Edinburgh I could use to promote the History of Scottish Music Centre from now until Christmas but I’ve drawn a blank so far. Edinburgh Council in theory does of course support such ventures so it remains to be seen if they can be of any help. I’m always looking for ideas so do feel free to get in touch at [email protected]