As part of the 2021 Women’s Work festival this week, participants of the ‘Mothers in Music’ programme will be taking part in two events.

Mothers in Music is a twelve-week songwriting, recording and performance programme designed for female musicians with parenting responsibilities. This year’s programme saw seventeen women from Northern Ireland, Donegal and Dublin take part in a series of online workshops with music industry professionals. The participants were coached on beginning to make music again and regaining their confidence, building a community of musicians to support, socialise, work and collaborate with.

The participants will feature in their premiere of a virtual performance of ‘Push That Knot Away’ by KT Tunstall (18 June) as well as a live version of the female-focused music podcast Girls Twiddling Knobs (17 June).

Commenting on the Mothers in Music programme, Charlene Hegarty, Talent Development Manager at Oh Yeah Music Centre said:

We were hearing from a lot of women who were asking for more opportunities to participate in music, but who were unable to attend festival events and programmes due to their caring responsibilities. Mothers in Music’ is our response to this demand. 

The programme has allowed participants at varying stages in their careers to focus on their music while balancing parenting demands. ‘We are really proud of how the programme has succeeded in helping participants to build their confidence, enhance their creative and technical skills and reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness by bringing like-minded people in similar circumstances together to learn and enjoy music’, Hegarty added. 

Workshops, concerts, talks
Also taking place as part of Women’s Work this year are online performances from indie-folk singer Dani Larkin (17 June), West Cork singer-songwriter Míde Houlihan (18 June), alt-folk singer Kate Nicholson (19 June), and Tyrone singer Bernadette Morris (20 June).

Tomorrow (17 June), there will be a discussion on women working in music management, with Lisa Hannigan and her manager Bernadette Barrett and singer-songwriter Fia Moon and her manager Ismay Bourke. Songwriting, women producers, and marketing and PR will also be discussed in various workshops at the festival, and there will be two ‘Getting to Know’ sessions with Pillow Queens (18 June) and Dani Larkin (19 June). 

There will also be a funding application workshop with PRS Foundation (18 June); a session with Gemma Bradley, musician and broadcaster on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio Ulster, on how to build skills in media and communicate effectively (18 June); and a talk with Why Not Her? founder Linda Coogan Byrne, who will speak about her research on gender disparity in Irish and UK radio station playlisting (20 June). 

For further information, visit: www.womensworkni.co.uk.