Darlington community interest company Tracks are starting off 2021 with some good news. They’ve been awarded just under £15k to run a series of online events between January and April 2021 by Arts Council England, and Creative Darlington is also supporting the Back on Track programme in 2021, following Tracks successful promotion of fantastic online programmes, including Darlo@Home and Hark! The Sound of Christmas last year.
Throughout 2020 Tracks took their distinctive brand of music events online with a series of performances, many drawing thousands of viewers and audiences from around the world. The new funding for“Back On Track” will support an array of activities and performances that will appeal to a wide range of audiences.
“This funding is so important to Tracks, it means that we are able to continue creating diverse, exciting, quality online events and workshops to give people missing the creative arts in the real world, a chance to engage and discover something new. It also means that we can continue to reach out to our musical community with offers of paid work, giving them some much needed support and opportunities in such uncertain times”
Rob Irish co-founder of Tracks.
Tracks project BIG Little Gigs has been running in Darlington for the last five years bringing fun live music events to a family friendly audience. As part of the funding there will be two online BIG Little Gigs events, the first will feature Leeds based Back Chat Brass plus a musical craft session with host Sarah Wilson.
Hark! The Sound of Stories will also return. These events are a celebration of music and the written word and how they so often inspire each other. During the 2020 restrictions Tracks produced two Hark events that received rave reviews. The next event will premiere online on Sunday 31st January at 7pm and there will be a writers workshop held during the afternoon.
Noisy Daughters is a project supporting women and trans women in music and will be running a series of four free online workshops covering a variety of topics within the music industry. The first of these will feature Darlington vocal coach Claire Willmer speaking about how to look after your voice as a live performer. She will be teaching warm ups, warm downs and sharing other tricks of the trade. Other workshop leaders include Liz Corney of The Cornshed Sisters and Field Music, Francoise Harvey, award winning published author and musician, and local rising star Jodie Nicholson discussing how to promote your music online. The first of the four workshops will run on Saturday 23rd January at 2pm .
There will be some live music hip-hop cyphers being created and premiered too. The films will be hosted by Rianne Thompson from BBC Introducing and will feature the cream of the North East hip-hop scene including artists from Darlington’s own hip-hop label Legitimate Anarchy.
For more details of all of the events and workshops please head to www.tracksdarlington.co.uk and please note there are limited spaces on all of the workshops so places must be booked in advance.
