Totally Sound – Queen’s Award for Enterprise – Nile Rodgers at Summerhall – Jonathan Joyce – Missing student Yulia
Totally Sound Music Project offers young people aged 12-18 from across the City the opportunity to get involved and creative through music making.
They offer high quality, low cost , accessible music programmes which are open to everyone from absolute beginners to more experienced players. Whether young people are interested in drums, guitar , vocals, lyric writing, keyboards, performing or recording then there are tutors who can help and inspire them.
All equipment is provided and there is access to a digital recording studio and live rehearsal spaces. An open mic slot is run every week to encourage young people to develop skills and confidence in performing.
The project which runs on weekly on Saturday afternoons during term time attracts an average of 40 young people.
Participants come from at least 10 different high schools in the City and some are school leavers who not yet in employment or studying.
Core funding comes from City of Edinburgh Council – Open All Hours budget and has been supplemented by Creative Scotland funding and of course by their own funding raising efforts.
Their spokesman said:-“It’s our 10th birthday this year and we want to celebrate in style.There are two fabulous events lined up in June.
“Our first, is an afternoon birthday celebration on Friday 21st June at South Bridge. It’s a big thank you to many of the specially invited guests who have supported the project over the years. It’s also an opportunity for music, cake and chat.
“Summerhall is the venue for the end of term show on Saturday night of the 21st June. This will a fantastic opportunity to showcase all the creativity that’s been going on during the year.There will be a really varied range of performances featuring acoustic sets, rappers, rock, indie and even the occasional ukulele and lots of original material.
“Over 30 young people will be performing, for some of them it will be there first time on stage. Our extra special guests will be the wonderful Mad Tango, an established Edinburgh band who are very special to Totally Sound because that’s where they met each other.”
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Mark Lazarowicz, MP for Edinburgh North and Leith, has written to 3 businesses based in the constituency who won the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise to congratulate them on their achievements, which are examples for the UK to follow in their export success.
The 3 companies are:-
HotDocs, a document automation software company
Petroleum Experts Ltd which develops petroleum-engineering software programs used to model and manage oil and gas fields
The Innis & Gunn Brewing Company Ltd which produces speciality beers extremely popular in Canada, Sweden and the USA (as well as course in the UK!)
Mark said:-
“3 out of the 13 Scottish winners of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise are based in Edinburgh North and Leith which is a success that we can be very proud of.
“All 3 of the companies, HotDocs, Innis & Gunn and Petroleum Experts, have managed to achieve major export growth at a time when the UK, like other countries, is keen to rebalance its economy and increase export sales.
“The Awards also highlighted their investment in product development as a major factor in that success which is why it is so important to ensure that SMEs can get the funding they need.
“It’s good to see that we have 3 companies locally which appear to be so forward looking and successful in developing products that the rest of the world wants to buy.”
This year there are a total of 152 winners of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, 13 of which are based in Scotland.
The Queen’s Award is the most prestigious award for business enterprise in the UK and the winners will be celebrated at events at Buckingham Palace and the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) on 23rd July.
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The founder of one of Edinburgh’s foremost digital agencies died at the weekend in South Devon. The tragedy has been recorded on the company’s website as follows:-
“It is with great sadness that we write to advise that Jonathan Joyce, co-founder and Technical Director of Storm ID, died on Saturday, 15 June, after getting in to difficulties whilst swimming off the South Devon coast.
JJ, as he was known to us all, was a keen and able outdoor swimmer. Media reports suggest that after getting in to difficulties, he was brought ashore by a member of the public and then airlifted to hospital in a serious condition where he was later pronounced dead.”
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by Arran Breckenridge Forrester High School
Yulia Solodyankina, a twenty-two-year-old student from Russia, who was studying at Edinburgh University, disappeared from her home in Edinburgh and has now been missing for eleven days. She is about 5ft 6in in height and wears a lot of rings on her hands. Friends and family believe that it is strange that she would leave without her phone.
In Edinburgh, she was last seen at the Wee Red Bar at the Edinburgh College of Art in Lady Lawson Street on 7 June 2013. Police are continuing this search.
Recent reports say that her family may think she is at a festival somewhere in Scotland, but that it is strange that she would leave without a word.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
