NEW BUMPER CASH PRIZE
The Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championships 2025 is open to entries, and has announced a new bumper prize of £2,500 for the popular Freestyle category, with runner up prizes totalling £3,250.
All eight competitions within the championships offer generous prizes, but the popular Freestyle event tops the lot.
The Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championships is the largest event of its kind in the world. A record 73 youth pipe bands from across Scotland took in the last event, as well as 8 quartets and 17 freestyle ensembles for a day of inspiring musicianship, camaraderie and competition.
Hundreds of young musicians from 99 schools gave 83 performances. In addition to the Freestyle event, the Championships offer six graded competitions for pipe bands, for those new to competition right up to bands at the top of their game.
Piping quartets are also welcome. Next year’s event takes place on Sunday 9 March at the William McIlvanney Campus in East Ayrshire.
Although there are generous prizes for all the pipe band competitions, the Freestyle event offers the biggest incentive with winners taking away £2,500 and runners up receiving attractive increases in prizemoney with £1500, £1000, £750, £500 respectively.
The Freestyle welcomes school band and group performances of any musical genre, contemporary or traditional, with any combination of instruments and vocalists, as long as they include the pipes. It is designed to showcase the versatility of the pipes and to encourage their inclusion in mainstream music-making in schools.
Scottish Schools Pipes and Drums Trust, the charity that organises the Championships, believes in the transformative power of music, and in the wider achievement that pupils can experience by being part of a pipe band.
The charity helps state schools to sustain and set up piping and drumming tuition for their pupils, and lends pipes to pupils free of charge.
Chief Executive Alex Duncan said, “The Freestyle event celebrates the fact that pipers can play music of all genres, traditional and contemporary, along with other instruments. For schools wanting to give this ago, we can lend concert chanters free of charge, so that the pipes can be tuned to the same pitch as other instruments.”
“We thank East Ayrshire Council for hosting the Championships at the fabulous William McIlvanney campus in Kilmarnock again. With an impressive modern main stage arena that seats an audience of over 400 people, two more large performance spaces, 50 classrooms for changing, easy access for transport and parking, and excellent catering and exhibition space, the venue surpasses anything that we have seen in Scotland.”
The Scottish Schools Pipes and Drums Trust is a registered charity promoting the playing of pipes and drums in Scottish state schools.
The charity offers cash grants for tuition and other related band costs, free bagpipe and b-flat concert chanter loans, paid trainee internships, and organises the Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championships – the biggest schools piping competition in the world.
More details on the Championships can be found at:
https://thechampionships.org.uk/
or find us on social media @Piping4Pupils