Harmony Gains Lottery Funding

An award winning charity bringing the therapeutic effects of music to older people in the Scottish Borders is set to expand its services, thanks to Lottery funding announced today. Harmony receives £208,082 from the Big Lottery Fund to provide more interactive musical performances for older people, their families and the wider community and to expand those sessions into sheltered housing and day care centres.

The project receives its award from the Big Lottery Fund’s Investing in Communities fund.

Harmony has provided free concerts to older people in care homes and other settings in the Scottish Borders for the last five years. Today’s award will enable the group to deliver its interactive musical performances on a regular basis to around 2000 older people in the care sector and to expand the number of venues in which it operates. The funding will also mean that the families and friends of these older people will be able to join in and spend more time with their loved ones.

Violet Baillie, Chair of Harmony, said: “This Big Lottery Fund award is wonderful news for the thousands of very frail and lonely older people in the Scottish Borders. We can now expand our monthly concerts to care homes, hospital wards, day centres and sheltered accommodation while also placing greater emphasis on the involvement of families and communities in the lives of older people.”

Jim Smith, Secretary of Harmony, added: “As a society we are very good at meeting the physical and medical needs of older people but often fail to recognize that we must also help them to meet their even more important social and emotional needs. The interactive musical performances which we provide bring joy and happiness into the lives of the oldest and most frail members of our community, so that they can live, and not simply exist.”

Announcing today’s funding, Big Lottery Fund Scotland Chair, Alison Magee, said: “I am delighted that this funding will enable Harmony to expand its concerts to many more older people, their families and communities. This project has been a huge success in the Scottish Borders and that is testament to its dedicated staff and volunteers.”

For further details about the work of Harmony:

Chair: Violet Baillie 01835 824040
Secretary: Jim Smith 01835 822239