Over the past year local folk singers John Hacker and John Bentley have organised five online folk music events. Three of these events featured spots from a number of top-rated professional singers – Eliza Carthy, Miranda Sykes and Vicky Swan and Jonny Dyer. In the course of these events over £2,000 was raised to support the Quay Arts Centre.

The pair had hoped that, by now, life would be returning to normal but learning to “expect the unexpected” has become a regular part of lockdown life. In order to keep the music going they have organised another online Quay Folk Club evening which will take place at 7.30pm on Sunday February 28th.

Featuring a range of local and mainland folk singers the evening is being run as a fundraiser for the Club itself. As John Bentley explained,”Having previously used our funds to commission spots from professional singers we now need to replenish our funds. This will enable us to put on more great folk events in the future.” If readers would like to donate just go to the Quay Arts Folk Club page on the Just Giving website (www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/quayfolkclub). The evening will feature guest spots from Derbyshire duo Stephen and Julie Wigley along with local singer Keith Newnham. Alongside this will be shorter spots from a number of other local folk club singers including Second Time Around, Maureen Shaw, Steve French, Linda O’Connor and Frank Heap.

Everyone who is appearing is doing so through specially recorded home performances. As John Hacker noted,”We’ve all had to learn some new IT skills over the past year When life returns to normal it will seem odd not to be able to mute people!”

Readers can find out more about the event by searching on Facebook for “Quay Folk Club” or “Isolation Row.” The evening will be simultaneously streamed on Facebook and YouTube. Past events are still available to view on YouTube.