The good news at the start of this month was that ASO has been awarded a start-up grant of £1000 by The Garioch Partnership in Inverurie.Although ASO has run for many years under the Instrumental Music Service, now, as an independent organisation, we have to suddenly find the money for venue hire, insurance, loan instruments and publicity among other things as well as professional fees for our music direction.
We also feel it is important to keep membership free for all those aged 16 or under or in full time education so we have a lot of money to raise.This grant enables us to cover the costs of expert tuition and music from Richard Ingham for the next couple of months and to see if we look likely to get the numbers to be viable.Having circulated the news of our new beginning to the local press, we caught the interest of David Gordon of Knock News who came to this rehearsal to take photographs of us for an article.New recruits this time were Daisy, our youngest member to date, Franziska and Tim ( just visible again the back ) now our oldest member.