A purpose-built audition platform for a national youth brass band

The brief: a national youth brass band charity runs auditions across the country every year — hundreds of young musicians, multiple venues, two bands and a panel of assessors. The entire season was run on Google Forms, spreadsheets and email. They needed one place where candidates could apply and book, assessors could score, and the office could run it all.

The problem

Every part of the process lived in a different tool. Applications arrived through Google Forms and were re-keyed into spreadsheets. Audition slots were coordinated by hand and confirmed over email. Eligibility — which band a child can audition for — was worked out manually against their age. Assessment happened on paper at the venue and was typed up afterwards. And there was no candidate-facing front door at all: nothing a thirteen-year-old applicant or a visiting assessor could simply log into and use.

Every year the team effectively started from scratch — the same questions, the same spreadsheets, the same chase. Hours of repetitive admin for a small charity, on top of running the auditions themselves.

“We wanted young musicians to apply and book in a few taps, and assessors to mark at the venue with nothing to type up afterwards.”

What we built

A purpose-built audition platform on an edge-first stack — Cloudflare Workers, D1 and R2 — with a clean, branded experience for everyone who touches the season. Three roles, one system:

• Candidates apply once and it carries forward. A young musician registers, builds a profile (instruments, examinations, parent and carer details) and never re-enters it the following year.
• Self-serve booking with automatic eligibility. The platform works out each candidate’s UK school year from their date of birth and offers only the bands they qualify for — Children’s Band, Youth Band, or a choice where they overlap. They pick an instrument, a venue and an available slot, and can change or cancel up to 48 hours before.
• Assessors score in the app. A venue-scoped “auditions to assess” list, then a structured scorer: each piece marked against clear descriptors, plus scales and sight-reading, with a live running total and an automatic grade — Distinction, Merit, Pass or Fail. Nothing to write up afterwards.
• Invigilators check candidates in as they arrive, so assessors always see exactly who is ready at their venue.
• The office runs the season from one console — venues, slots, candidates and results — instead of a stack of spreadsheets.

The detail that makes it work

The eligibility logic is the quiet hero: bands are defined by school-year ranges, and the system calculates a candidate’s year from their age on the cut-off date, so nobody is ever offered a band they cannot audition for. Booking re-checks availability at the moment of confirmation (one candidate per slot, future-dated, not already taken), and cancelling reopens the slot for someone else. Assessors only ever see the venues they are assigned to; candidates only ever see their own records.

The result

Young musicians now apply, complete a profile and book a slot themselves — and only ever see a clean, branded portal, never a spreadsheet. The system tells them which bands they are eligible for instead of making them work it out. Assessors mark at the venue, in the app, and the result is ready the moment they submit. The office runs the whole season from one place, with no re-keying and nothing to reconcile.

It is the kind of build we love: take a process scattered across Forms, spreadsheets and inboxes, and give everyone who depends on it a single, purpose-built front door. See more of how we approach custom builds and integrations, or browse other work.