Brass Band Contesting Survey: Part 2 – Purpose and Public Perception

Brass Bands England (BBE) has launched the next part of the Brass Band Contesting Survey currently being undertaken. The survey is designed to find out your views on the current state of brass band contests and if you missed part 1 (the key questions) you can still take part in that too.

The aim of this survey is to look in more detail at views on why contests take place, why we go and what we want to achieve. It also asks about how the public perceive what we do and how this outwards appearance can be improved and made more relevant. This follow up is significantly shorter than part 1 and should take about 10 minutes to complete.

To take part in the survey please visit the survey page on BBE.org.uk(https://www.bbe.org.uk/what-we-do/brass-band-contesting-survey) or to go direct to part 2 please go to https://forms.gle/1xEsfjoza5NzbwJu7

One participant from each part of the survey will be picked at random to receive a year’s free individual membership of Brass Bands England.

Excellent response to part one

BBE Partnership and Relationship Development Manager, Alex Parker, commented: “We have had over 450 people take part in this survey, which will be giving us a really clear picture of people’s thoughts and opinions about contesting. This is also really close to our target so we can produce a report that has statistically accurate confidence intervals in the results. With this in mind, if you have an opinion on contesting – either good or bad – we want to know. We also want to hear from more people who don’t contest anymore to understand why that is, so please share the link with those who might want to take part!”

Early Results

Sections represented

In part one participants indicated what sort of band they play with and early results indicate that whilst 23% of people who have taken part play in the Championship Section, only 12% come from 4th Section bands and 5% from non-contesting bands.

Areas Represented

Similar to the above, London and Southern Counties are strongly represented with 20% of participants whilst the North of England and Yorkshire trail with 12% and 14% respectively. From the devolved nations, we have only had 4% from Wales and 1.7% from Scotland. We would encourage banders from Wales and Scotland to take part in the survey as the results could influence the direction of all of banding in the future!