We are Bloco Fênix: a fun community drumming group for adults in Dumfries and the surrounding area. We came together after starting to drum as a group for a short term community project. When the project ended we realised that we didn't want to stop drumming together, and that we had scope to grow, so we formed Bloco Fênix.

We believe in the positive power of community drumming for boosting wellbeing, building friendships and keeping people active. There's loads of academic evidence of the power of community drumming in supporting mental health, and we feel that in our own journey.

We wrote a constitution, created policy documents to protect our members, found practise space and got a bank account. We even have a range of varied drums and samba instruments for players to learn on. We've recently held a series of successful taster sessions which have boosted our membership numbers and shown us that the people of Dumfries and Galloway want to drum!

Our next stage on the journey is to be able to fund professional tuition workshops for our members so we can continue to grow and learn over the coming months. Our aim is modest - we'd at least like to be able to fund the first couple of tuition sessions for our group so we have a head start.

Please help us to grow and develop, so we can bring the positive power of Brazilian style music to as many people as possible!