Dear Friends,

Happy New Year to you all. I hope you've had a great Christmas and feel refreshed and ready to go with the marching band year ahead!

On behalf of BYBA, I would like to extend a warm welcome to two bands who have both rejoined BYBA after being members many years ago. These are Burgess Hill Marching Youth, and 78th Leicester Scouts & Guide Band (Thurmaston Marching Brass). I hope they will both enjoy being a part of the wider BYBA family.

For those of you who may not be aware, any bands joining the association for the first time, or returning after a long break, will be offered free membership for the first year. So, if you know a local band that may be persuaded to give BYBA a go let us know so we can get in touch and talk to them about being part of this great association. You will hopefully also know of the reduced membership and contest entry fees for existing bands a for the 2019 season.

We would like to share some exciting opportunities for BYBA members, as part of our vision for 2019 and beyond. 2019 will be a year of re-building for BYBA, and as part of that we are going to be visiting bands to talk to them about future membership of the association.

This is such a wonderful activity that many of us have benefited from greatly over the years; it is exciting that we can look forward and help the Marching Band movement prosper once again in the UK. I hope member bands are starting to see more benefits in the association, as well as the contest season. Keep an eye out for future events and training days as well as webinar conferences.

We are starting to build closer links with the Royal Military School of Music, who want to work with us, so watch out for future events and links with them.

We're are also in discussions regarding a much closer working relationship with IMG (Indoor Music Games), and we will keep you posted of future events. We're very excited with the opportunities that these connections bring to the activity.

You may want help or advice with certain aspects of running your band, or want to have a judge to work with a particular aspect of your band. We would like to help if we can so if you need any advice or want to arrange for a judge’s visit, then please feel free to contact either myself at chairman@byba.online or judging@byba.online

I look forward to seeing you this year.

Yours in banding.

Neil

Neil Wright - BYBA Chairman