We’ve been working our arse off on this behind the scenes for the last couple of months, and are over the moon to finally announce our next series of ‘LIVEwire’ events. This is the biggest announcement of it’s kind yet, and we’re hoping that it’ll pave the way for us to become an established producer of leading spoken word events.

Firstly, we have four regional ‘LIVEwire’ events: taking place in Manchester (20 Sep), Bristol (13 Nov), Birmingham (22 Feb) and Colchester (29 Apr). These regional events will see either Luke Wright or Salena Godden paired alongside at least one other Nymphs & Thugs artist, plus a guest poet.

As well as these, we have four resident nights at Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds (2 Oct, 4 Dec, 5 Feb and 1 Apr). These events will feature at least one Nymphs & Thugs artist alongside another leading guest poet and also an open mic section, hosted by Matt Abbott.

Finally, we return to Byline Festival for a third year running. Our ‘LIVEwire’ Salon will take place late on the Friday and Sunday nights, and we have no fewer than twelve rebellious renegade poets performing for you at some point over the weekend.

For the first time ever, we’ve received support from Arts Council England in order to stage these events. Up until now, Nymphs & Thugs has been 100% self-funded; either through merchandise revenue, box office income or personal investment. However, in order to take things up to the next level and more importantly to be able to pay people properly, we felt that ACE funding was a natural step to take.

As a result of this, we’ll have top quality video content and photographs from the regional and resident Leeds nights, so that we can showcase the atmosphere and environment that we’re creating with ‘LIVEwire’.

This is a significant moment for us, and we want to take this opportunity to thank everybody for the support that you’ve shown us so far. See ya soon!