Arts Council grant is music to the ears

Jukebox: The Teenage Revolution, a project run by Lancaster-based arts and heritage charity, Mirador, and Lancaster University Library, has been awarded a £37,000 grant to support artworks looking back to the future.

Welcome to Lunashire and Broken Records - The Phantom’s Playlist will have their first outing at Lancaster University’s Library Festival on September 13 and 14 to coincide with Heritage Open Days.

Welcome to Lunashire is an immersive virtual reality journey where festival visitors are invited to don a headset and be transported back to the world of the Fifties and Sixties complete with coffee and milk bars, fantastic nightlife and out-of-this world fashion.

It has been created by Tom Diffenthal and Lauren Paige Dowling of You’re Most Welcome Ltd. In 2018, Tom co-produced an awardwinning film for Walking In Others Footsteps, a previous Mirador project.

There will be another interactive opportunity at the Library Festival courtesy of Broken Records – The Phantom’s Playlist, a ‘choose your own adventure’ style game housed within an abandoned antique jukebox set against the backdrop of Britain from the Sixties into the Nineties.

This darkly funny game is the creation of Matt Tully, an associate practitioner with Lancaster’s awardwinning theatre company, imitating the dog.

Welcome to Lunarshire and Broken Records will also feature in November’s Light Up Lancaster festival, alongside Jukebike, the third artwork supported by the ACE grant.

Produced by Dan Fox of Ulverston-based Sound Intervention, the Jukebike is an electric trike carrying a jukebox-style sound system playing music of the Fifties and Sixties and projecting digital images from the era.

Dan is also the creator of Voices From The Hood 2 which will feature in Morecambe’s Vintage by the Sea festival on August 31 and September 1.

Situated in the former Morecambe Visitor Information Centre at The Platform, Voices from The Hood is a chance for festivalgoers to relax under vintage salon hairdryers and listen to sounds and voices from the Jukebox project’s archive while flicking through a magazine reminiscent of those game-changing decades.

The original Voices from The Hood was produced as part of Mirador’s Walking In Others Footsteps project and appeared in Lancaster, Preston and Barrow.

The new artworks are the latest element of the Jukebox: The Teenage Revolution project which has been running events in Morecambe, Blackpool and Lytham St Annes since the spring.

Ditchburn Equipment Ltd based in Lytham was one of the UK’s first manufacturers of jukeboxes and impresario Jack Hylton, whose archive is at Lancaster University, was one of the first people to back the venture in the Fifties.

Jukebox: The Teenage Revolution project, is also supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery players; Arts Council England, the Granada Foundation and Garfield Weston Foundation.