Scott Johnson's parents set up a fund for young musicians in Rotherham

Scott Johnson's parents have set up the Scott Johnson Bursary Fund for Young Musicians, to pay for musical equipment for young people in Rotherham, where he grew up. Phil Selway announced it on Radiohead's Facebook page on 8 August. Uncut has his post and the parents' statement. Over the past couple of months, a number of people have asked if there is anything they can do in memory of Scott.¹

Johnson, the band's drum technician, was 33. He died on 16 June when the stage roof collapsed at Downsview Park in Toronto while the show was being set up, about an hour before the gates were due to open; three other crew members were injured. At the band's first concert afterwards, at Les Arènes in Nîmes on 10 July, they played “Reckoner” as a third encore with photographs of Johnson on the screens.

Johnson's friends will run the fund locally, mostly through Rotherham schools. His parents set up the one account so that nobody would start another by mistake. On the fund's website they write that the kind messages have been heart-warming, and that many people had asked to give money in place of flowers.