A rural West Cumbrian music venue and social enterprise is seeking youngsters to help it move forward.
The Gather, based in Ennerdale, is a community owned and run café, shop and music venue that first opened its doors in 2016 in a bid to bring life back to the village.
In March 2020, the building’s upstairs community rooms were transformed into Upstairs at The Gather – an accredited small music venue that became an international success in just a few months.
It has now gone on to support several young people in gaining experience in music technology covering everything from managing the performance technologies, sound, lights, filming and live streaming – and they’re looking for more interested youngsters.
Peter Maher, 76, who is the guiding force that turned The Gather into a reality, gained funding from Arts Council England to transform the upstairs space after they agreed it was ideal for live music.
But shortly after the venue’s first gig took place the world shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic – prompting Peter to go back to Arts Council England with an idea to stream live performances instead.
He said: “Our first gig was Snake Davis and Gareth Moulton and within four hours tickets had sold out which was a real surprise.
“They then agreed to do a matinee and that sold out again in five days. The impact on local people was quite stunning, they hadn’t seen anything like this before.
“But the significance of that gig is that it was three weeks before lockdown, so we went through periods where we couldn’t open The Gather and I went back to the Arts Council to say I couldn’t meet the deadlines on the first funding grant but that we could stream live events if they gave us money to stream.”
Arts Council England agreed to Peter’s request and Snake Davis and his son Joe then helped the team at the venue source suppliers for the streaming equipment needed and ran a three-day training weekend to teach everyone how to use it.
Peter added: “The surprising thing was that there were three or four young people who asked if we would mind if they got involved as they were interested in tech.
“So in that group of people being taught how to use it we had new people there who just wanted to explore it.
“As we did the live stream shows we had a succession of young people who developed substantial tech skills and three of those are now at Uni doing courses in music technology, which is really wonderful.
“The capability of young people to pick up these skills is really quite profound. Our latest guy, Harry, from Wigton came to a gig with no background in it in February and at our last gig he was a sound engineer.”
Throughout the lockdown, Peter organised artists from across the UK to pre-record performances that were then live streamed online from The Gather.
But he didn’t stop there and became inspired after spotting people from all across the world watching the steams to reach out and feature artists in the USA, which proved a success.
The Gather now regularly sees world class artists perform both live and virtually in the space and the team have continued to host live streams for all events due to their popularity.
Peter said: “It’s all still really exciting and it all just exploded. Now we’ve come back to doing live events we’ve been going monthly ever since.”
A total of nine young people have since volunteered and benefited from the venue and Peter said they wanted to see more young people using the space.
He added: “We found in conversation with young people that there were two answers to why they weren’t coming to our gigs. One because it’s not their sort of music, which we understand and secondly the cost and isolation of the village.
“If you’re young £15 is a lot for a ticket and if you live in Whitehaven, Workington or Maryport how do you get there if you don’t drive? So we’re trying now a new initiative to combat at least some of that by setting aside free tickets for under 18s to remove one of the barriers.
“Our current focus is finding young people and bringing them into The Gather’s performance arena to get them interested in the arts. We’re hoping it will have an impact, you never know.”
In the future, Peter said they’re also hoping to gain additional funding for an intensive week long course for youngsters to learn the fundamentals of music technology skills.
Gigs take place once a month on average and youngsters are able to get involved with setting up technology, running sound and stream checks with then artists and being a part of the performances themselves.
Peter said no qualifications are needed – only enthusiasm, reliability and hard work and an interest in music, the arts and technology.
While volunteers are usually aged between 16 to 19 he said age is no limitation. Those interested in getting involved in the next gig can find more information by clicking here.
