Please Let our Young Musicians Practice!

Freya, March 2020, before the lockdown.

Our daughter is 16 and left home to do her last two years of high school at Douglas Academy. She made this sacrifice so that she could follow her dreams of being a professional musician. Douglas Academy has one of the best music departments in the country and it was a real challenge getting in.

Now that she's there, she finds herself in the position of not being able to practice. This is because of rules laid down the local authority that dictate that brass, wind and choral musicians are not permitted to practice. I don't know the actual laws and regulations so I can't quote them. What I do know is that pupils in residence in other council areas in Scotland don't have this pointless restriction, eg. Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

One of the parents has started a change.org petition to the Scottish Government to have this restriction reversed.

The school and residence have both set up practice and performance areas that are completely compliant with social distancing restrictions. Naturally both these institutions are duty-bound to follow local restrictions, even when they make no sense.

Here's what the young people say in the petition:

We have given up a lot in order to pursue our dreams of becoming professional musicians, spending every week away from our own homes and families. Please help us persuade Education Scotland, the Scottish Government and the councils which run our school and residence to recognise our unique situation and let us do our music practice in the same way that other pupils are allowed to. If not, all the years of hard work and commitment we have put into music will be wasted.

Lots of kids don't want to do their music practice. But we really do. Please help us!

Douglas Academy Pupils

Petition

Here is a direct link to the petition, followed by an embedded Facebook post of mine that you can use to sign directly from there. It won't cost you anything but a minute or two of your time and it might just made a difference!

Petition page on change.org

Call to #Hive Community

Hive is an awesome decentralised blogging platform and I just know that if I ask the #Hivearmy to come together and help out with a Hive Five and a signature, they will! So, how about it Hiveans?

Petition Link