Gig Buddies Hull and East Yorkshire is celebrating after being awarded over £230,000 in National Lottery funding to support its work with adults with learning disabilities for the next 3 years. The project, based in Hull, will use the money to expand their team and match more gig buddy pairs to go to local gigs throughout Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire.
Gig Buddies Hull and East Yorkshire has been running since 2019 and has been hosted by the charity, Hull Red since 2022. Gig Buddies was first founded by the charity Stay Up Late in Sussex. The scheme matches up a person with a learning disability and a volunteer around mutual interests building life-long friendships.
Over 80% of young people with a learning disability want to go to more gigs, 56% said that they would be more likely to go to gigs if staff understood more about learning disability. Sadly, 1 in 4 have been bullied by members of the public at gigs and 1 in 3 are afraid of staff at music venues. Gig Buddies aims to change this.
Emily Clixby, Lead of Gig Buddies Hull and East Yorkshire says: “We’re super excited that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised the work of Gig Buddies Hull and East Yorkshire. Now, thanks to National Lottery we will be able to grow a team, match more pairs and host more inclusive gigs as well as supporting our local venues reach diverse audiences.”
The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.
As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year (2023/24) The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700 projects to turn their great ideas into reality.
To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk
