Alexa, Play My Favourite Podcast

WORDS BY GRACIE HARVEY

Research has shown that in

2020 over 155 million people listened to podcasts every single week. This is a huge increase on previous years, with over 700,000 active podcasts and a whopping 29 million episodes available. From true crime to comedy, music, entertainment, sport and everything in between, it seems a lot of us have

all been pressing play on podcasts whilst our social lives have been paused.

To further prove how far podcasts have come in such a short space of time, global podcast advertising grew 44% from January to June last year.

Businesses quickly discovered that this was the

place to raise their brand profile during a time of crisis - getting in front of the right people, at the right time, in exactly the right place.

It’s no surprise then that 65% of all people who listen to podcasts went on to trial a product or service that they were recommended by the content creator. The increase

in value of this medium is

clearly worth investing in, especially since businesses have been given the time to spend more time learning about their audiences. Last year was not what we had hoped for, but every cloud has a silver lining and when the world stood

still, businesses were able

to redefine their marketing strategy. Pivotal in a time of national crisis.

Not only this, it is also important to recognise how significantly people’s attention spans have decreased over recent years. Immediate consumption of media is of utmost

importance to modern society now. We don’t want to have to spend ages reading through pages and pages of content and prior to the pandemic, our busy lives often limited the amount

of time we had to catch up on Netflix too. Coronavirus

gave us a chance to slow down, and with that came more time online. As a result

it has never been more

important to have an online presence when it is so readily consumed.

And that’s how podcasts have become so huge. They offer a flexibility and entertainment value that

is unparalleled and can be consumed just about, well, anywhere. Throw into the mix the fact that most of us

will be working from home for the foreseeable future, where it’s far easier to get distracted or procrastinate. Taking social interaction out of the picture means that we need to find other ways to keep ourselves motivated throughout the day. It’s no surprise then that so many have turned to Podcasts to

do just that.

Here’s some of our favourites;

THE ORIGINAL CAST THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE MY FAVOURITE MURDER MY DAD WROTE A PORNO

If you love musicals, this podcast about original cast albums and all the people who love them is the perfect one for you. Hosted by award-winning filmmaker and playwright, Patrick Flynn, each week he catches up with someone you would find on-stage, backstage or in the house of theatre.

ORIGINALCAST.LIBSYN.COM

Joe Rogan is an American comedian and mixed martial

arts colour commentator, come podcast host - bringing you the real Joe Rogan Experience.

From guests that range from political figures and scientists, to comedians, magicians, actors, directors and TV hosts, authors and journalists to musicians, video game designers; even athletes and business people.

OPEN.SPOTIFY.COM

Join the fanbase of

“Murderino’s” with this #1 hit

true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark.

Sharing never-before-heard stories, experiences and advice your mother never told you, with an added bit (a lot) of humour - you won’t be disappointed.

MYFAVOURITEMURDER.COM

The groundbreaking comedy podcast the world is talking about. If you haven’t heard of this one, where have you been? Not all of us listen to

Podcasts and even we knew

about this one. Jamie Morton

reads a dirty book written by none other than his DAD.

He certainly discovers more about his father than he ever

bargained for, that’s for sure.

MYDADWROTEAPORNO.COM

DEAD MEAT

For all things horror, reviews and that which makes your skin crawl, Dead Meat is the podcast for you.

DEADMEATPOD.LIBSYN.COM

Behind the Murals

WORDS BY GRACIE HARVEY

Thanks to International Art Producer, Andy Pea, we’ll be flying in some amazing artists from all around the world to flood Hull with art as part of The Shorelines Project.

Meet our impressive artists who are going to be using their artistic expression and sheer talent to embark on a

journey to educate, demand change and spark discussion about Climate Change and its effect on Hull’s future.

Andy Pea

Andy is another Yorkshire based artist and our

International Art Producer

for The Shorelines Project. He worked with Calvin

Innes to bring the very first mural to life as part of this project - The Girl.

He has been an artist for over 25 years and has worked with many different people and mediums to create fresh

and innovative outcomes

every time. He has worked across the UK, Europe and Mexico, encompassing all aspects of the art spectrum from installations and

soundscapes, to film, murals and fine art. His popularity led him to become the lead

artist for the City of Culture 2017, designing and painting two murals as part of the year-long campaign. Andy was also selected to paint at the Akumal Arts Festival in

Mexico in November 2019.

Just recently he has returned from an artist residency in Mexico, funded by the British Councils Emerging Cultural Leaders Project.

“I like the outcome to be a

collective effort that has been

created with the community for the community.”

Calvin Innes

Calvin is a prolific artist and illustrator based in

Yorkshire, UK. Over the last 20 years he has become recognised across the UK and Europe as a hugely diverse artist, with work spanning commercial illustration, animations and TV

commercials, murals, print and digital display, as well as traditional mixed media

exhibitions. As Creative

Director of Drunk Animal

Creative Studio, he combines his knowledge of marketing with his artistic output, to create engaging and effective visual campaigns.

Calvin is equally at home illustrating cartoons for editorial publications, as he is scaling buildings to paint large scale murals and high impact public art pieces. His illustrations have been distributed globally to an audience of billions, with award winning TV commercials and numerous

children’s books to his

name, as well as unique original designs created for international product launches, such as the range created for Frugal Bottle from Frugalpac.

Erin Ko

Erin Ko is a New York based

mixed media artist. Her work

often includes augmented reality and video projection. Ko is an international artist, exhibiting her work in New York, London, Mexico City, Beijing and Berlin. She enjoys using contradicting ideas, often combining analogue art with augmented reality work.

Mark Ervine

Mark grew up in Belfast and started painting early on in his life, painting his first mural at age 6. He has been commissioned to create

artwork wrapping around buildings and is a highly regarded artist. Addressing issues that are not widely addressed in mainstream media, he uses this platform to inform the community about their history and culture or social issues such as drugs, alcoholism and suicide.

Issues that young people are faced with as they are growing up in working class communities.

Jim Vision

Jim Vision aka Jim Rockwell

or Probs, is a London based artist, known for his bold and colourful artwork. He is best

known for his participation in Save the Bees project and a Terry Pratchett tribute.

Together with his business partner, Matilda, he established a creative

powerhouse, Rockwell House, and has been running Meeting of Styles, London’s

Skeg

“Let’s have a skeg” is a visual artist who plays with colour, balance, various subcultures and formal elements to

create a whole host of

bespoke artwork for clients.

Inspired by everything from

Studio McGuire

Davy and Kristin McGuire are Hull based multimedia

artists. They specialize in light projections and extremely detailed crafted paper art, such as their “The Paper Architect”. They use light to create shadows and contrasts in their work, allowing them to stand out so much from other artists.

greatest graffiti and street art festival, since 2009.

Jim has murals adorning the walls in France, Singapore, Australia, and also cities such as Buenos Aires, LA and New York

graffiti art to freestyling, architecture, music, film and

travelling to patterns. Print, texture and automatism, Skeg’s artwork creates a sense of pride, style, identity and distinction.

Kev Largey

Kev is a UK based artist

who started his career at 16, has since worked for Walt

Disney, IKEA and Uni-ball. He creates busy pieces with lots of colour. He creates a colourful utopian world and invites the viewer to spend some time living with them. His inspiration is peoplewatching and the everyday. He celebrities the ordinary and aims for his art to appeal to all ages.

Eject

Eject is an all round creative force from the North of

England. The artist and designer creates everything from branding and quirky illustrations to large scale interior graffiti and murals.

He honed his own unique, highly versatile style and the ability to design with the sound of a whisper, the strength of a bear and everything in between. Eject creates disruptive art that makes you think - holding a mirror up to society and projecting relevant issues onto their audience through his work.

Eject’s love for design and

Bella Phame

Bella is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Phame is from

Brooklyn NYC. Together, they are BellaPhame, a husband and wife art

collective. Coming from different backgrounds, they merged their styles and

graffiti is fuelled by all things creative, typographical, design, art, fashion, graffiti, punk, hip-hop, soul and

reggae.

varied influences in order

to build a new body of work that includes murals, collages and screen printing.

The Return of Festival Season

WORDS BY GRACIE HARVEY

Could 2021 see the return of the Festival season as we know it?

Live music. Road trips. Mud. Camping. Dancing. Singing. Booze. Sunburn. Socialising. But most importantly, swapping out lockdown comfies for an OOTD.

It’s crazy to think that almost two years ago, all of these things would have just been second nature to us.

We wouldn’t have thought twice about grabbing our favourite people, heading to a mass gathering and immersing ourselves freely into whichever festival took

our fancy. of Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival unveiled a bunch

of alternative digital plans, following the news that the festival would be cancelled

due to the coronavirus

pandemic. They got creative and ran a series of digital activities, virtual shows, festival-wide crowd-funding campaigns, artist-facing workshops and a virtual Fringe Central which provided avid festivalgoers plenty of ways to #MakeYourFringe.

The Fringe Society teamed up with Crowdfunder and Fringemakers was born. Through the crowd-funding campaign, the organisers were able to further support the artists and venues

to raise vital funds, after estimated losses exceeded a

huge £21 million in 2020.

One silver lining is that 2020 allowed Fringe to reach people who may never have been able to travel

to Edinburgh before. The wider audiences that were

born last year because of the power of digital, are now part of the global audience. So where there have been

some serious setbacks for the

festival, it has also helped broaden its horizons.

Download Festival also made

the best they could out of the situation last year, providing the 'Download Family' with a sense of nostalgia as they went back through the years gone by. The Download Festival spokesman said:

“2020 has been a tough year for us all, and we were beyond gutted not to be able to experience the Download Festival with you all. We gave you Download TV to reflect on memories of the past, and what the festival means to all of us. Download

2021 is going to be something special and go down in the history books when the Download family reunite.”

Download is still expected to take place between the 4th and 6th June 2021, but no announcements have

been made to outline exactly how the festival organisers will achieve this, whilst still adhering to social distancing guidelines.

For Glastonbury, 2020 was due to be its 50th birthday party and so organisers hoped to be able to do all they could to plan and prepare for this year. However, they recently announced (on the 21st January) that unfortunately, for a second year running, Glastonbury will be axed;

move heaven and earth, it has become clear that we

simply will not be able to make the Festival happen this year. We are so sorry to let you all down.”

As for Leeds and Reading Festival, announcements seem to be a lot less vague when it comes to plans for 2021. The Festival Republic boss is confident that Leeds

and Reading will happen this year, providing us with confidence that they will have the correct measures

in place for festival-goers to remain safe. One of which is

ensuring that the track-andtrace app is in full operation. Ticket holders will only be able to enter when they are proven to be virus-free at an additional security gate before entering the festival grounds.

Due to still take place between August 27th and 29th, there are said to be six huge headliners instead of the usual three, which will be set out over two main stages. Melvin Benn - Reading and Leeds boss - has been very vocal on how he sees Reading and Leeds returning in 2021. COVID gave the festivals a year to innovate and Melvin promises that one thing they are going to concentrate on is testing;

“You can’t have festivals

with social distancing. It is just not possible. In June, I published a report which was based on essentially testing people before they arrive at the festival or

the event. Then creating an environment where

everybody in the space has been tested, and tested negative, in order to gain entry. Therefore, they are unable to transmit to other

people because everybody in the space is clear. That gets rid of the need for social distancing.”

Where most of the festivals

have just taken their line-up from 2020 straight into 2021, Melvin was determined to

wipe the slate clean and start again;

“Someone asked if we should

just book the same thing, but we’ve never done that so

why would we start now? We’d be a year out of date”.

Kudos Melvin, Kudos.

Will app-based entry to big events become ‘the new

norm’? Are drive-in festivals

going to start trending? What will the festival world

look like this summer?

Will festivals adopt a more “hybrid” style where they have a mix of live and digital shows? Socially distanced versions of festivals like

Fringe will see it being thirty to forty per cent the capacity it was in 2019! Others may be cut by more than half, meaning the culture will “take decades to recover”.

I’m sure you’re as reluctant as we are to truly get your hopes up for the festival season resuming as we know it in 2021. It is clear that proper direction is still needed from

the government on how restrictions will continue to

impact the events industry. Even with the latest headline

“UK could see significant return to normality by summer and vaccine cocktail

trial begins” (did someone say cocktail?), we're not going to just be able to open the doors to a life exactly the same as it was pre-pandemic, for fear of returning straight back to square-one. One thing we can be sure of, is that it is still going to be a very strange year for festivals in 2021 and beyond.