Competitions

We decided to enter four competitions this year – Talent Is Timeless; Purbeck Rising; Milkmaid Songwriters; pFite

Talent is Timeless is a great initiative started by Saskia Griffiths-Moore as a free songwriting competition during lockdown aimed specifically at the over 50’s. It then went on to become a Facebook Community, then a website community, face to face events and now has over 12,000 members worldwide.  There’s still a free annual global songwriting competition open to anyone over 50 with prizes worth winning:

• Record Deal (JAM Records)
• Recording at Abbey Road Studios
• Production
• Music video, Photography

A day’s recording at: UK: Fieldgate Studio; USA: Sound Temple Studios; Canada: Chalet Studio; EU: Audioplanet, Poland

We’ve entered Something We Like To Call Love. Judging is by a panel of judges so once you’ve entered, that can be it if you like, you don’t have to promote to get social votes etc. It feels good to be part of something like this – there was a great community feel on Facebook to start with but it did soon start to get a bit moany so we stepped away from that. The online community and membership seems to be working well but is not something we want to delve into at the moment. The kudos of winning would be good and the prizes are great, but it’s good just to be part of it and a bit of a kick up the backside for us to keep going.

Purbeck Rising

We entered this competition first during lockdown and got through to the final 10, then just missed getting enough votes to be the top 3 to go on to perform live at the Purbeck Valley Folk Festival to compete for a headline slot the following year. But we did get free entry to the festival the following year (as lockdown eased) as a sort of consolation prize which was brilliant and helped us a lot – we made good contacts there, did an open mic slot and got booked for the Brixham Folk Festival, were inspired by Grace Petrie and wrote one of our best songs inspired by her and the festival as a whole. We tried last year but think our entry wasn’t received so decided to try again this year. It’s called Purbeck Rising so technically I guess we’re not newcomers anymore, having started out in 2018, so it’s probably not surprising that we didn’t get through to the shortlisted 10. Last time we got shortlisted it was a bun fight for votes on Facebook – the ones who got the most likes got through, so it was a popularity contest. We were doing really well but should have kept our powder dry as the ones just below us had a last minute spurt, dropping us down to 4th place. This year the shortlisted 10 get votes via an online form which seems a lot fairer and less stressful. It does still mean the ones with more social media followers or fans are likely to get the votes as they have a wider audience to ask to vote for them, but there is the chance for people to discover someone new and vote for them.  We’ve booked tickets to go to the festival anyway as we love it!

Our entry for this competition was Widow’s Revenge.

Milkmaid Songwriters

We entered this last year and got through to the first heats and the same again this year. The Milkmaid Songwriting Club is a regular meet up for songwriters to showcase their songs, they have regular songwriters circles and run this annual competition for a slot at the Bury Folk Festival. There are 4 live heats held at the Risbygate Sports Centre over 4 evenings, each evening with about 10 acts. We were in the second heat and went on just after the break. You get to perform a warm up song then your competition entry which is judged live on the night by a panel of judges. It doesn’t feel intimidation as the whole group is really welcoming, everyone supporting eachother so you kind of forget the competition element. This time we performed Simon’s Nick as our warm up song then The Ballad Of Gabriel Oak as our competition entry.

Photos of the heats with the live recordings are put up on the website but our live recording didn;t save on the night so our submitted mp3 is being used instead with our image. We have to wait until after the 4th heat to hear if we go through to the finals – that’s a wait of a month. It’s a long drive to Risbygate and we had to get an Airbnb so it costs us a bit to enter (there’s an entrance fee of £5) but it’s a good networking opportunity and there’s a bit of kudos in winning any competition. Plus it’s fun and they’re nice people.

At the time of writing we’re waiting to hear how we’ve done.

pFite24

This is a poetry and songwriting competition organised by Home-Stage folk – https://www.home-stage.co.uk/. We’ve entered last year and it was great to meet with Maddy, one of the organisers at the English Folk Expo after the event. We did an online interview with her as part of the competition promotion.The pFITE pilot (Poetry & Folk In The Environment) was set up as competition with a financial award going to the most popular Folk and Poetry entry. The same amount was donated to an environmental charity of the winners choice. A programme was released every day in February and into March presenting the entries and discussing them. The competition is global and free to enter – you just have to submit a video of you performing your work. pFite is not-for-profit.

Voting is done on the basis of ‘like’ of each video on YouTube, so again a bit of bun fight to get votes and a popularity contest – the more followers you have, the more votes you’ll get. But it has given us a really good promotional opportunity – the prize is £10,000 (yes!) so it gets a lot of interest and it’s a clever format. All of the videos go onto the pFite YouTube channel which then get thousands of hits. They have 2.41k subscribers.

We entered The Return Of The Bloodied Crow, inspired by the successful reintroduction of the Chough to Kent by groups including Kent Wildlife Trust. And the Trust picked up on it and sent out press releases. We got radio play, performed it live at open mics and begged for votes, shared it far and wide on social media and to ate it has had 90 votes which is pretty good. 789 views and 15 comments, all of which help. We know we can’t win as the bigger names enter later and have more power to get the votes. There are 131 entries so far and the competition closes on 30th April. View them all on the fPite24 playlist on Youtube.

We decided to create a special video and got our friend Alex to film us in the Bluebell Kitchen – the sound came out so well that we managed to use it to release a single, something we wouldn’t really have thought of doing if it hadn’t been for the competition.

Our entry is below – if you’d like to vote, please do! You have to be logged in to YouTube and just click LIKE. There’s no listed closing date for votes at the moment but I expect it will be within May 2024. Check the website here: https://www.home-stage.co.uk/pfite24/entries