La Folia music charity race day at Wincanton cancelled

Dear Friends and LinkedIn connections,

Firstly, my apologies for hitting you with a begging letter on a Friday evening.?However, it is for a very worthy cause.

The "Call to Arms"

This Sunday should have seen Wincanton Race Course’s annual Charity Race Day, which this year should have been raising funds for the music charity La Folia. ?However, yesterday the British Horseracing Association (BHA) made the tough decision to abandon the race meeting at Wincanton racecourse on Sunday due to excessively hard ground.?

Very sadly, this also means that the fundraising reception and lunch for four hundred people in the Paddock Pavilion has also fallen victim to the abandonment.?This is obviously going to mean a major hit for the Charity’s fundraising.?They need your help.

The Charity

La Folia is a Salisbury-based music charity that brings together world renowned instrumentalists, singers, actors, dancers, visual artists and writers to create new music, original projects and ground-breaking performances with writers and performers of all ages and abilities, and has done a lot of outstanding work children and adults including Special Needs in the field of music therapy.

The aims and objectives of La Folia are entirely consistent with the philosophy and ethos of my late niece, Katie Johnston, who died of secondary breast cancer in May 2018, aged 31, while head of music at Furze Platt Senior School (FPSS) in Maidenhead.?Katie is daughter of long-time Wincanton members and my brother and sister-in-law Andrew and Catherine Johnston.?Katie was no stranger to Wincanton Racecourse: she loved going racing there and participated in many South & West Wilts Pony Club summer camps at the racecourse.

Should you wish to know a little more about La Folia, their website can be found here: https://lafoliamusic.org/ .

Please also take a few minutes to watch this short documentary video that was intended to be shown at the reception on the day.?If you are asked to set up a Vimeo account, just close the dialogue box and press Play: https://vimeo.com/762056484 . I challenge you to watch the video with dry eyes.

The video includes an excerpt of a performance of “In Memory of a Friend”, a piece of music composed by Katie Johnston for her AS-level composition.?It was written in memory of Alex Buckler, a dear friend, Pony Club contemporary and pupil at King’s School, Bruton.?Alex died from sudden cardiac arrest while standing in the tea queue at school.?Alex is buried in the churchyard at Penselwood, a couple of miles from Wincanton Racecourse, where his family lives.?The Trustees of the raceday will also be making a small additional donation to Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY) in memory of Alex.

How can you help?

There are two ways that you can support La Folia:

·??????by bidding in the auction for one of the 73 lots, including some “Buy Now” lots that will directly support specific objectives.?The link to the auction site is www.jumblebee.co.uk/lafoliawincanton ?and it ends at 3.30 p.m. on Sunday 23 October 2022, or

·??????by making a donation via the JustGiving site.?You can make a donation via just giving using: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/lafoliawincantonraceday .

If nothing takes your fancy on the auction site, or you see this too late to bid (I am posting this on a Friday evening) – please be generous on the JustGiving site.

It would be enormously kind if you could support La Folia one way or the other, and please pass this message on to generous friends and family.

Thank you and best regards,

George