With a grant from The Leicestershire Fund, Drum and Brass CIC have run their STEAMpunk Orchestra summer holiday and after school club for 80 hours. 8-12 year olds living in the Fosse Ward area in the city came together to create instruments from scrap materials and then play them. Over 70 young people attended the club, 80% from the global ethnic majority.
The sessions encouraged interactions between young people and student volunteers, including a DMU Aeronautics Engineering student and a young person completing her DofE Award, giving the children strong role models.
The funding provided has covered staff, overhead and publicity costs for the project, vital to reach children in this area where many families are on low incomes and use the local foodbanks.