Completely Stunned But Happy!

It’s been quite a time for Arts Council England with their website going down and being out of it for almost two months. My creative partner Dr. Jacqui Norton and I had just submitted our application for series three of an in-cell TV series called The Lyrics, The Music and The Money two days prior to the whole website application process collapsing!

The burning question we were living with was; will we, or won’t we? Will anyone actually be able to read the application even? We just didn’t know.

Then, eight weeks to the day from putting it in we got our funding to do our in-cell TV series with WayOut TV. Thank you ACE we are extremely grateful!

I can’t tell you how excited Dr. Jacs and I are at being to take our project forward. It’s absolutely brilliant.

Basically we will be writing, producing and presenting six episodes of The Lyrics, The Music and The Money. This time we are looking at the ‘live’ music industry, especially focusing on those who are stepping into it from having had, ‘time-out’. It will cover everything from performing live from scratch , starting with busking, playing grassroots venues right through to looking at jobs that support the music industry such as being a roadie, aiding the technical crews or even doing catering at music festivals through to being hired as security staff. Jobs that are actually achievable after release.

We will also be running ‘behind the wall’ in person workshops in four prisons and a new ‘ Sound Futures’ music industry workshop for ex-offenders with the support of PRS for music in London. So lots to look forward to in 2026.

As always our aim is to help transform prisoner’s lives, by raising self-esteem and increasing their chances of employability on release.

We don’t do this alone of course and we are delighted to be filming again with Alex Wiley behind the camera.

So do watch this space for updates.