Micro Grants Awarded to Folk Artists
With a huge thanks to Conrad and Jennifer Bailey for their continuing donations, we are delighted to announce the awardees for the fourth year of Micro Grants for Professional Folk Artists who live and work in England.
The Micro Grants for Professional Folk Artists support artists in any way that will help develop their professional career. Applications range from developing creative projects to support the production of new albums to instrument or equipment purchases.
Micro Grants have been awarded to:
Grace Smith Trio
Purchase of new Ear Trumpet condenser microphone. To improve the sound quality for an ongoing project called ‘8 Strings’ in which Grace will perform with another bowed string player as a new way to engage with existing and new audiences.
Grace is a fiddle and viola player, and dedicated music educator. The Grace Smith Trio, released their debut album Overleaf in Autumn 2023, with a successful UK tour and are set to have a busy 2024 with festival appearances and touring throughout the year. Grace also performs with French-dance band, Cri du Canard, and with Katie Doherty & The Navigators.
Photo credit: Elly Lucas
Lon Dubh
Contribution towards tour accommodation for their first UK tour, preventing excessive travel and so ensuring the singers can give them best at every performance.
Lon Dubh are a three part harmony and multi-instrumentalist trio performing hypnotic original songs. In 2023 they performed their first international headline at Stimmen Festival, Ettiswil in Switzerland and completed an autumn tour with sell-out shows. The trio is made up of Devon-based folk musicians Anna Ling and Anna Anise, and Irish artist Branwen Kavanagh.
Kerry Andrew AKA You Are Wolf
The research of a new collection of England’s earliest folk songs as part of a larger project to record and release and accompany a new literary novel.
You Are Wolf presents folk songs and lore with unusual, electronica-tinged arrangements influenced by drone, experimental classical and alt-pop. Their new album, hare // hunter // moth //ghost (released November 2023), explores the theme of transformation following Kerry’s recent experience of four years of debilitating chronic illness. It was The Guardian’s Folk Album of the Month, a Podwireless Top Ten Albums of the Year and a Folk Radio UK Album of the Year.
Through a cappella recordings of the songs and the associated novel, Kerry will reach a new audience.
Photo credit: Julia Hawkins
Jim Causley
This funding will support the costs of a self-written solo album about modern-day issues affecting rural communities as well as people living isolated lives within those rural areas.
Jim Causley is a folk singer and musician from Devon, best known for specialising in the traditional songs of the West Country, for composing of own songs - often inspired by the region and local folklore and for musical settings of poems by his relative, the late Charles Causley. Jim has been nominated six times for a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award over the years, including ‘Singer of the Year’ in 2017.
Jim is aiming towards producing an album of these new songs.
Lady Nade
Contribution towards marketing and PR for a new album, 'Identity' which seeks to explore through song the underrepresentation of diversity in folk and Americana within the UK music industry.
Lady Nade is a singer-songwriter and advocate for mental health well- being equality and diversity. Named one of Bristol’s most influential women of 2022, Lady Nade is continuing her rise as a multi-award winning eclectic Folk and Americana singer-songwriter. Her third album ‘Willing’ entered both the official Folk and Americana charts on its release. With the title track Single winning ‘UK song of the Year’ in the 2022 UK Americana Awards. Nade is also proud to support the Music Venue Trust and is also an ambassador for the Musician's Union Census.
Lady Nade will be working with leading Americana and British Folk musicians in the development of this work.
Photo credit: Leslie Shimmin
Lucy Huzzard and Hazel Thompson
Contribution towards debut five track EP costs.
Lucy Huzzard and Hazel Thompson are a Sheffield-based queer folk duo playing self-penned folk laced with humour, harmonies and heartache. With influences drawn from a lifetime steeped in traditional English and European folk music, song and dance, they combine a love of groove and soulful raw harmonies. On melodeon, clarinet, guitar and two distinct and powerful voices, Lucy and Hazel write on themes of land and climate justice, feminism, apocalypse, power and platonic love.
After two years as a music duo, this EP will help to develop their profile with promoters and audiences and support their decision to become full-time musicians.
Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne
Contribution towards the costs of a new album which focusses on the interplay of English folk songs and Black American and Caribbean musical traditions.
Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne has been performing professionally on the English folk scene since 2017, touring festivals (including Shrewsbury, Cambridge, Sidmouth and Towersey) and venues through the UK and Europe. He has performed extensively with trio Granny’s Attic, as a soloist, and in collaboration with other artists including Reg Meuross, Angeline Morrison, Stick in the Wheel and The Demon Barbers. He’s received two BBC Radio 2 Folk Award nominations, one in the Young Folk Awards category with Granny’s Attic in 2014 and one in Horizon Award category as a soloist in 2018.
These Micro Grants are just one of many ways in which the English Folk Dance and Song Society supports professional folk artists.
