Singing for their supper …

Cupar’s Amateur Musical Society has teamed up with CuparNow, the town’s new Digital Improvement District, to help promote and sell the Society’s upcoming production.  Raymond Young of the Society explains: “We have a box office running in the town for two weeks ahead of our show – Kipps - that starts on the Tuesday 4 February … but we have no internet connection.” Raymond approached CuparNow.  Richard Watson of Destination Digital - the company running CuparNow - was “delighted to help” and they stepped in to provide a solution.  Richard explains: “We’re running the free CuparNow wi-fi in the town centre as part of the project’s service delivery. It has been used by thousands since it went live last year – and more than 750 users have signed-up to receive updates from the town’s businesses and organisations.” Richard adds: “We were able to patch in additional bandwidth to provide CAMS with a temporary solution, providing free broadband for their box office facility on Crossgate for the two-week countdown to their event.” Raymond expressed the Society’s appreciation saying: “We have run temporary box office facilities before, but always using someone’s phone data – a real inconvenience and a cost. The CuparNow team have been very supportive. They met for a site visit and we had broadband up and running the same day.” The box office is running at the Caring for Cupar premises on Crossgate every day until the 7 February between 10am and 3pm.  The CAMS project has led CuparNow to look at how other community groups could be best supported. Simon Baldwin of Destination Digital adds: “We are working with the project’s steering group to look at Cupar’s community properties – those which have community access but that have little or no wi-fi coverage. If we can help to extend our network for community benefit, we are more than happy to do so.” A scoping project is to be undertaken to identify all community asset premises in the town and then explore the wi-fi requirements of the many groups using them. Simon adds: “This is exactly the kind of strategic collaboration our digital improvement district is able to consider – to improve digital participation and to provide digital support to multiple audiences.”