Musicians set up a virtual festival

While the days of sleeping in a cold, cramped tent to enjoy the unforgettable experiences that go along with witnessing your favourite musicians perform at a festival are temporarily gone, now is the time to sit back and enjoy watching the latest festival on the music circuit, Upload Festival, safely at home.

It started as a project between local musicians Mike Meinke and Paul Wallbridge. After the pair saw the Musicians’ Live-Streaming Community Facebook group, they were joined by the musicians involved with that as well, Kiya Ashton and Jay Taylor, with Jersey’s Nadine Edmundson, the driving force behind a new mental health awareness charity album in the Channel Islands, joining the fray.

‘With a huge number of gigs being cancelled and postponed, even before we were officially in lockdown, it’s certainly taken its toll on us as a community,’ said Miss Ashton.

‘Music is a big emotional outlet and escape for most of us, performers or not, and to have the thing we’re trying to take our minds off then take our outlets can leave us feeling very trapped.

‘Fortunately, with the wonders of technology we can combat this and still offer a space for expression, escape and comfort.’

The festival, set to take place on 18 and 19 April, will be streamed through the video service Twitch and will see performances from Nessi Gomes, Rob Hunter, Mick Le Huray, Flexagon, Stuart Leach and Lydia Pugh, as well as many more.

The organisers said they are also keen to see more musicians get involved from across the Channel Islands.

‘We have some very exciting names as well as some local favourites,’ added Miss Ashton.

‘We’ve opted for Twitch.tv, which is primarily used by gamers, but has recently been adopted by musicians too.

‘This allows us to have a central channel to broadcast all individuals' streams through when they’re live.

‘Viewers will be able to interact similarly to Facebook live with a Twitch account, which is free and fairly straightforward to set up. [Plus] we’re planning to co-stream the channel through the Upload Festival CI Facebook page where possible, and will be sharing links to access the streams on there and through other similar groups and pages.’

n To get involved, visit www.facebook.com/uploadfestivalCI/, or email uploadfestivalci@gmail.com.