Wirral’s innovative gigs deadline this week
The Wirral New Music Collective was one of the beautiful ideas to come out of our BICo Wirral project last spring. Now, the collective is looking for bands, musicians and promoters to put on innovative live gigs in Wirral this summer, from May to September 2018.
The closing date for applications is this Friday, April 6.
Christopher Torpey is editor of Bido Lito! magazine, and part of the collective. ‘The idea behind Wirral New Music Collective is to encourage the great musical talent that exists in the region to use their home patch as a canvas for their live performances,’ he says. ‘Wirral has an enviable track record when it comes to nurturing great musical talent, but, unfortunately, there aren’t a huge amount of venues for the artists to perform. Our long-term aim is to change that, and create a hub around Birkenhead where all of the region’s great artists can work together and put on shows. For now, we’re going to bring Birkenhead and the surrounding areas alive with some brilliant, innovative live shows, and show people in the region the potential that Wirral has as a breeding ground for new music.
Selected live gigs will receive £500 to help stage and promote them, with successful applicants invited to a regular monthly meet-up, and support from the Wirral New Music Collective to help realise their project. The selected shows will also receive extensive promotion across the WNMC network.
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‘We’re looking for the most ambitious, outlandish, interesting and fantastic. That may be a night of experimental electronica in Birkenhead Priory, heavy dub in Woodside Ferry Terminal, twisted anti-folk in Birkenhead Library or frenetic post-punk in Gallagher’s. It could be a German techno DJ or a touring Americana artist with a support bill of local talent. It could be exclusively local talent,’ says the collective.
If you have an idea for a gig this summer, you can apply here.
Responses to the call so far have been exciting. Chris says: ‘We’ve already had some fantastic applications which will show off the breadth of talent in the area — and will make use of some iconic buildings as re-purposed live spaces. The ingenuity shown in some of the applications has been massively encouraging — but I know there’s still a huge pool of talent and ideas yet to be tapped into! This is a great opportunity to realise a dream and start a movement, so, if you have an idea, let us know!’
Here’s that link for applications again: http://bit.ly/WNMC2018.
Wirral New Music Collective was one of a number of cultural projects supported by the Beautiful Ideas Company and Wirral Borough Council in 2017. An informal collective of music professionals, it includes record labels, music writers, promoters, visual artists, artist managers, magazine publishers and musicians who believe in music’s power to shape a new future for Wirral. It is chaired by Bido Lito! Magazine and includes representatives from War Room Records, Toucan Tango, Skeleton Key, The Open Door Centre, Spider Project, Fresh Goods, Emotion Wave and various other music bodies.
If you’d like to get in touch for more information, send an email to info@wirralnmc.co.uk.
The Beautiful Ideas Co. CIC is a collective of local entrepreneurs, regenerators and place-makers in Liverpool, who believe that the key to getting things going in a place can be found in the grassroots. In addition to investing in ideas — like Wirral New Music Collective — BICo works tirelessly with people who have ideas to help develop them into economically self-sustaining projects, facilitate and support community and social innovation projects and bring ideas and collaborators together to do amazing new things.
