Say hello to The LINK: Stockton Globe’s little sibling

We’ve been so excited to launch ‘Live at The LINK’ for Ambassador Theatre Group’s (ATG) Stockton Globe. It’s a programme designed to support local and emerging artists at the Globe’s little sibling venue, The LINK, and, after months of planning, our carefully curated hybrid launch event happened last week.

The event welcomed a studio audience full of Stockton based businesses, venue owners and press, and also streamed live from the venue via the Stockton Globe website and Facebook page to event promoters, journalists from further afield and the general public. We worked hard with our friends at the brilliant Low Four Studios to ensure a seamless link between IRL and digital.

On hosting duties we had the amazing Rianne Thompson (BBC Music Introducing) and the event featured live performances and exclusive chats with local singer songwriters Luke Royalty and Jodie Nicholson, and hip-hop artist Shakk, as well as an insightful ‘in conversation’ with General Manager Jo Ager about the future of the venue and the programme.

The LINK is a multi-functional space which will operate as a café, bar and live entertainment venue in its own right. The 200-capacity venue will support local and emerging artists with the Live at The LINK programme, adding to the vibrant live entertainment scene in Teesside. During the day, visitors will be able to enjoy coffee, cake and a light food menu before the transformation into a live gig space.

In the future, The LINK will host a variety of events for the people of Stockton and beyond, with diverse grassroot gigs, listening parties, pre-parties and afterparties all being worked into its schedule. The venue is also looking to work with local music event programming partners such as the Tees Music Alliance, NARC. and NE Volume, as well as BBC Music Introducing.

Both versions of the launch were incredibly well received, and we were honoured to get brilliant feedback across the board, while the media backed the project in a big way with coverage appearing in Total Production International, NE Volume, Darlington & Stockton Times, Teesside Live and NARC.

If you weren’t there, you missed a great night…. but you can catch it again here:

Bipolar Sunshine at the Bench Self Made Gallery

Ahead of their performance and the Bench International Conference, the frankly amazing Bipolar Sunshine treated us to a Lunch Time Live session in the Bench Self Made Gallery.

Tipped for the huge things, Bipolar Sunshine aka Adio Marchant is already getting the nod from leading Radio shows across the UK. including Radio 1’s Zane Lowe, Huw Stephens, Phil Taggart and Alice Levine, plus Xfm’s John Kennedy, Jon Hillcock and Eddy Temple-Morris.

Our session captured the attention of the media with brilliant coverage on Manchester Wire, Viva, Northern Quarter, The Skinny, Don’t Panic and many more.
His debut EP, Aesthetics, is out now. And features popular tracks ‘Rivers’ and ‘Fire’, played here, which have both topped the HypeM charts and surpassed 120,000 plays on Soundcloud.

Check out our video with an exclusive interview and acoustic performance of Fire below.

For more information on the Bench Self Made Gallery visit the Facebook group.