Local Musicians Need a Local Business to Help Children's Charity By Dave Fox

When local singer/songwriter Sharron Nicholleasked me if I wanted to help her to record a 5 track CD for a local children's charity, I thought, 'Why not?'. I'd worked with Sharron before in Dance-Fusion band, Hot Minute and acoustic duo, Raw Element s, so we soon fell into a routine and the songs came together in no time. Most of the recording went without a hitch until we started work on a song called Capture Lightning and irony stepped in. We had almost finished recording the vocals when we heard the distant rumble of thunder so decided to take a break and watch through the window.

Things soon picked up and before long it had turned into a major electrical storm. Then a huge bolt of lightning flashed across the sky and struck our TV aerial. I heard a loud crack behind me and realised exactly what had happened as I turned to see smoke pouring out of the back of my PC and a blank screen. Luckily, I have a friend Jorge Santos who just happens to be a computer genius and despite the mother board being fried, he managed to recover most of the data from my hard drive, including all the work we'd done on Capture Lightning. We've just finished recording the last song and it's almost ready for release now but one thing is holding us back and this is where we need help.

Our plan is to sell the CD for £3.99 a copy but it will cost us £1.20 per unit leaving only £2.79 for charity. We are looking for a small local business to sponsor us and pay for a batch of CDs so that we can donate the whole £3.99. The charity we have chosen is The Children's Centre Fund, 70 Walker Street, Hull. Charity Number 2274 that helps children with disabilities and complex needs as well as providing support for their parents and families. In return for sponsoring us we will print the company name and logo on every CD and poster as well as thanking them on BBC Radio at the launch and in any other publicity we get.

We would like to thank the following people who have already helped us by giving up their time and skills for free in aid of a good cause. Graham Warsap for driving out to the middle of nowhere and taking some awesome photographs, Jim Elbourne for designing the CD cover, Colin Holgate (Mayfield Recording Studio) for letting us use his studio and Andy Newlove (Fairview Studios) for helping me with the mastering. To can keep up to date with news about The Look of Innocence go to www.sharronnicholle.wordpress.com

News, Arts Hull Poet, Joe Hakim's Debut Collection Available Now By Tim Roux
	Joe Hakimis a performance poet and a writer. He is also involved in Hull Truck theatre with the Write to Speak sessions with Mike Watts, another excellent Hull-based poet. I have read some of his work on thisisUll.com, and he has a couple of poems in the excellent new poetry collection, Hull Connection, edited by the always superb Peter Knaggs (get hold of copies of his The Slab series - where he calls himself Read more...

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	Hull Truck Theatre has been boosted by news that it has retained full Arts Council England (ACE) funding until 2015, with inflationary increases year-on-year. The ACE report which recommends Hull Truck for funding provides a ringing endorsement of both artistic vision and the company's business model. It praises the theatre's partnerships and focus on new writing and explicitly recognises the need to sustainably fund change Read more...

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	Arc, the architecture and built environment centre for Hull and the Humber region, has secured £49,700 of Heritage Lottery Fund money to deliver a project exploring the notion of Hullness. The centre, which is part of a national network of centres across the UK, will be asking - 'Is there such a thing as Hullness? Read more...

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	Coming from a street near Mike Watts, I happen to know quite a lot about Hull and the extraordinary artistic flare up that has happened there over the last 40 years since the arrival of Philip Larkin of Hull University, John Godber of Hull Truck, and Cilla Wykes of ThisisUll, all of whom have had a major effect on the area (and if those sound like honorary titles they've got there, they should be). Read more...

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