What’s new in our touring support programme for northern artists?
Northern Line Round 8 Artist Marco Woolf: A storyteller who builds narrative around his music, while his songs are atmospheric with lyrics full of imagery.
Applied to Northern Line before? What’s new this time?
At Jazz North, we’re always looking for ways to make our programmes more straightforward to apply to. We take a look at the most useful information from the panel days and dive back into the application form to make sure we’re asking you the right questions as simply as possible.
If you’ve put in an application before then most of the form will look familiar to you - we’ve just updated the 3 main application questions. We used to ask you to pull together a hypothetical Northern Line tour and explain why you’d selected those dates and where you had built up a relationship with the promoter. We also asked you to draft a quick tour budget.
We now DON’T need you to come to Northern Line with formed tour plans and budgets and have changed up the questions to get an idea of your experience managing projects (so we know you’ll use your bursary wisely and do what you set out to) and ambitions for live gigging (so we get an idea of how you might set and work towards your goals). Questions 1 and 3 are updated to reflect this:
Please tell us about your live touring to date including venues and events you've played*
Explain how Northern Line support will enable you to expand your current live activity and reach new areas, promoters and audiences, and how they are relevant to you and your music.*
Tell us about your experience in leading projects (e.g. managing your own band, putting on a music event or organising a tour) including managing budgets and people*
If you have any questions you can come along to the Applying to Northern Line workshop on Wednesday 27th November - sign up on Eventbrite.
Preparing to apply
If you’re thinking about applying and you want to wait until after the ‘Applying to Northern Line’ workshop (we think this is a good idea!) there’s a few things you can think about to get ready.
These are all things you will most likely already have in your back pocket if you’re playing gigs regularly:
Assets
Select which high resolution images in portrait and landscape (not b&w) you will upload
Refine your artist bio (we’ll ask for one no more than 100 words)
Make sure your links are up to date and working
Gather your social media and music links together in one place for an easy c&p
Practical Info
Have your tech spec and stage plan ready to go
Live video
A big part of the assessment is for the panel to see you playing as close to live as they can (it’s a live touring support scheme!) - there are definitely options if you don’t have a video and you can read about this in the application information.
If you do have live video - it would be a good idea to look through your content and decide what to upload. It should be as recent as possible and representative of the band/project you are applying to Northern Line with.
If you don’t have one - you could organise a rehearsal and get a simple recording on a phone to give the panel an impression of your performance.
Read more: Northern Line page