Imagine a UK-wide festival of exciting brass band events for people of different ages, backgrounds and interests, offering the opportunity for new audiences to discover the joy of a brass band through hundreds of events in parks, concert halls and on local high streets.
What is Brass Band Week?
Brass Band Week is a new annual event launched by Brass Bands England to raise awareness of our nation’s brass bands and everything they have to offer.
Any events featuring brass bands or brass playing can take part by submitting their details to be part of the UK-wide festival.
The first ever national Brass Band Week will take place 6 - 14 July 2024 and is now open for submissions. Just tell us what you’ll be up to during the week, and we’ll do the rest.
Benefits of taking part
Brass Band Week is all about helping you reach new audiences. Taking part means you'll benefit from lots of support, including:
- National PR campaign
- Paid advertising
- Prizes for best events
- Social media marketing
- Listings distribution
- Brass Band Week merchandise
- Training, support & case studies
- Free resources to help people learn about brass bands
- Being part of a national campaign that celebrates and puts a focus on your band
Please scroll further down for more details on each benefit listed above.
Add your event listing
Anyone can upload their event listing for free, you do not need to be a member of Brass Bands England. To upload your listing, please visit the Brass Band Week event listing form.
Your event will then be moderated by a member of the Brass Band Week team and we’ll email you within five working days to confirm its inclusion. You can then start spreading the word that you're taking part, including adding the Brass Band Week logo to your marketing materials.
BBE members: Take advantage of boosted event listing benefits by adding your Brass Band Week event in the usual way, via your Member Dashboard (once logged-in). This means that your event will link through to your band profile so that audiences can find out more about your band. Your event will also appear on your band profile, and audiences will be able to see other events that you have coming up too. If your event includes performances from children and you’re applying for use of the BBE BOPA, you don’t need to upload your event seperately. Just remember to tick the ‘public event’ box on the BOPA form to indicate that you’d like to list the event publicly. To find out more about joining our membership organisation visit our Join BBE page.
Got questions?
You can get in touch with Clair and the Brass Band Week team at brassbandweek@bbe.org.uk.
Benefits - more details
Listings distribution
Upload your event listing once and we'll do the rest by sending it out to at least five other event listings providers! We're working with:
- The List - the UK's most popular arts and entertainment guide, reaching over 900,000 every month
- WhereCanWeGo? - another popular event listings website serving all the United Kingdom with a comprehensive insight into local events
- Outdoor Arts - the one-stop-shop for festivals, performances and anything creative taking place outdoors
- Bachtrack - concert-style events will be shared with Bachtrack, the leading music site for worldwide reviews and listings of classical concerts
- Brass Map - our new friends at brassmap.co.uk, working tirelessly to create an online hub for all brass band events
- Regional listings - compilations of events in cities and regions will be sent to providers such as Time Out, What's On and In Your Area
- Brass Bands England - plus our own Brass Band Week directory and UK events map
Prizes for best events
Your chance to win a £120 voucher for Pennine Music Publishing, a bespoke Besson goodie bag, two tickets to the British Bansdman concert series (Flowers Band 28 September 2024 at Reading Town Hall), a set (two bottles) of Bandsman Gin, or a year's free membership to Brass Bands England. Prizes will be awarded as spot prizes for excellence in areas such as community impact, artistic programming, innovation or inspiring the younger generation.
National PR campaign
We're working with Arts Media Contacts (AMC) to deliver a large-scale PR campaign to champion the many benefits of brass banding as well as promote and highlight your individual events and activites. We're also supporign you to make your own local connections with journalists - a recording of our webinar 'PR: how to get it right', delivered by AMC, will be available soon in our Member Resources library.
Paid advertising
A paid advertising campaign via the UK's most popular arts and entertainment listings site The List will include online banners, email and social media features and competitions. A centralised Facebook advertising campaign will also target music-lovers, families, and people looking to make connections in their local community.
Social media marketing
As above, a centralised Facebook advertising campaign will also target music-lovers, families, and people looking to make connections in their local community. A central organic-social campaign will be carried out by Brass Bands England. Please send your images, vidos, press releases and other content to brassbandweek@bbe.org.uk and use the hashtag #BrassBandWeek and tag Brass Bands England across platforms so that we can reshare your posts.
Brass Band Week merchandise
The order deadline for Brass Band Week 2024 has now passed. For 2025 we expect to continue free Brass Band Week bunting, posters and customisable posters, along with stickers for those participating in #PromsInThePlayground. Music stand banners and pop-up banners may be available to some of our partner event organisers on advanced request.
Training, support & case studies
Available for free for Brass Bands England members. Please login and visit your Member Resources library to find recordings of our recent marketing and PR webinar series.