June 27, 2011 3.25 pm This story is over 153 months old

Drill Hall shortlisted to Rock the House

Rock the House: The Drill Hall is in the final round of a new competition to find the best venues and best bands in the UK.

Lincoln Drill Hall has made it through to the final round of a new competition to find the best venues and best bands in the UK.

Rock the House is a parliamentary competition aimed at highlighting paths into music careers for young people and at the same time raising awareness of copyright issues.

The Drill Hall entered the Best Small venue category of the competition following a suggestion from city MP Karl McCartney, and based its application around the YoungCut initiative.

YoungCut is a project that offers a group of young people aged 14 to 19 the opportunity to plan, promote and run three music nights per year in the main auditorium for an audience of their peers.

The group meets every Tuesday to consider and organise every aspect of each event, from programming the bands (always including some local ones), to undertaking the marketing to ensure enough tickets are sold.

Each of the last two events have sold well over 250 tickets each.

The group is led by Charlie Kemp, who spends one day a week at the Drill Hall as part of her role as the Audience Development Officer for Lincolnshire One Venues, a network of arts venues from across the County, also known as ‘LOV’.

She said: “YoungCut is a really unique initiative of which the Drill Hall can be justifiably proud.

The group work really hard to make the nights a success, getting advice and help from the venue’s staff and we’re all just so pleased that it has gained some national recognition through this competition.”

Simon Hollingworth, Director of Lincoln Drill Hall said: “We are thrilled to have made it to the final five venues of this very first Rock the House competition.

“Even if we don’t win – which of course we hope we do – it’s a great achievement and is testament to all the hard work of the venue staff and the young people we work with on the YoungCut project.”

Venue staff will be travelling to the House of Commons on June 30 to join other finalists from across the country for the awards ceremony.

Source: Lincoln Drill Hall