This weekend saw the biggest Learn To Play Day to date

This year’s Learn To Play Day had its most successful year yet, with more venues taking part, and even more lessons given, than ever.

The event had its biggest year to date with 129 venues take part, and over 12,000 lessons were given to participants.

The amount of media coverage also saw an increase. 22 million media impressions got involved, a huge increase in comparison to last year’s 12 million. Sky Arts paid a visit to The Southbank Centre to film the Fender event at the Royal Festival Hall.

As always, the venues and retailers involved found the event beneficial. A number of venues had every available lesson pre-booked, and one retailer estimates that Saturday’s sales exceeded its target by £50,000. Spider Music had three drum kits bought from them following the event it held at the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff.

“By any measure, this was our biggest and most successful Learn to Play Day to date,” Commented Paul McManus, chief executive of the MIA. “As always, this was a huge team effort between the shops, venues, suppliers and all our sponsoring partners. Each year shows us that the level of pre-publicity each venue generates has a direct impact on the number of the public who visit the event and, let us not forget, the levels of instrument sales that subsequently take place. We are truly creating new musicians and customers for our industry with Learn to Play Day and planning for 2016 is already underway!”

“This year we really wanted to bring it to the next level,” comments Grant Fox of Fender GBI. “We had more teachers involved, and our press coverage had a much larger reach. Numbers have been fantastic! We sold out a week before the events, so around 225 tickets before the day.

“It’s an important day for us,” Fox continued.” It’s all about raising awareness for the brand, and really helping people take their first step into learning an instrument.”

“This was my first time involved in Learn To Play Day,” commented Ace, guitarist of Skunk Anansie, who was performing at Yamaha Music London “The event is very beneficial. People can come into the store and get a feel of what they like, and make a purchase, taking their first steps as a musician.”

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