Podcast: Arts Impact Chats: Craig Pennington, Future Yard

Craig leads the team behind Future Yard: a group of local music industry professionals with years of experience in the area. Future Yard CIC is a social enterprise established in 2019 to use music as a force for good in Birkenhead and the wider Wirral area, with the ambition to reimagine the role of a community music venue. Alongside a busy programme of new music talent, Future Yard hosts an artist development hub with free skills training programmes to enable young people to pursue careers in the music industry.

Future Yard began life as a two-day music festival in August 2019, when the enthusiastic response of the local audiences cemented the team’s plan to set up a permanent home for Future Yard. In early 2020, the team acquired a lease for a three-floor former nightclub in Birkenhead and began work to transform it into a music venue and music skills hub, before it opened its doors fully to the public in the spring of 2021.

Seva and Craig discussed the important role of local live music venues, why the team believed a space like Future Yard was needed in Birkenhead, and the role venues can play in artist and talent development.

This was a live recorded podcast with the opportunity to ask questions via chat. This podcast is for people in the arts, culture and heritage sector who are interested in live music, contemporary music, artist development, regional arts programming and working with young people.

Read more about how Future Yard used their Arts & Culture Impact Fund loan in their case study.

The recording is available above and you can access a full transcript of the webinar here.