Craven Arts Open Mic - 28th March 2026

We began last week preparing for our performance at the launch of the new North Yorkshire Open Studios 2026 art exhibition, ‘From the Earth,’ at Craven Arts House in Skipton. It’s hard finding time for these amongst teaching, event planning, looking after children, and Hannah’s other job, but this makes it even more special when we do finally get a chance to just play music and sing together. The more we play together, the easier it is to work with each other and improvise when we make mistakes—which is a relief, because when performing live, it’s better to carry on rather than stop!

Photo by Alex Johnston-Seymour

The exhibition opening was a lovely, peaceful event. Our brief was to play quietly in the corner, and we absolutely did our best. It was a pleasure to play unplugged all the soft, folky songs that Hannah loves, and Meg said it was "her thing" - playing music in an art gallery is cool! The art itself is beautiful; one painting by Donna Maria Taylor, when looked at from the other side of the hall, is like looking through an opening in the fabric of the world to a never-ending path through wild moorland, that you can imagine walking down care-free on a warm summers day. And the fantastical, magical figures in the entrance hall as you go in the main door are like nothing I’ve seen before. Our 8-year-old said that as he watched them, he thought they probably come alive in the night and walk around the gallery, mischievously tilting the paintings on the walls…

We are so lucky to have this on our doorstep here in Skipton, and if you are close, you should definitely come and see the display, which is on until 26th April. For more information about the exhibition, visit the Craven Arts website.

We finish the week exhausted from our open mic - and wow, what an evening it was!

There were varied and skilful performances from children aged 8–11, spoken word artists, singer-songwriters, an amazing new slick-sounding rock band, ‘Delicate Machines,’ and one of our resident women’s bands, ‘Taking Up Space.’ These women get more confident every time we see them perform and bring a lot of energy to the stage.

Finlay D Music

Catherine Warwick, Delicate Machines

Chris Beck

Hannah’s favourite performer was Chris Beck, who has a great voice and very likeable original songs, and he knows how to play to his crowd. We, Lost in Eve, finished the evening with our cover of The Secret Sisters’ ‘Tennessee River Runs Dry,’ which is so much fun to sing and definitely pushes us vocally.

Next week, we will have a very different gig at the Flying Duck in Ilkley. We’ve generally come to the conclusion that we don’t want to do pub gigs, as they can be quite rowdy and people are not often there just for the live music; however, the Flying Duck is special to us because they are strong supporters of live music. They also offer the only  (that we know of) songwriters' open mic in the area- hosted by local legend Mike Burtoft.

Our next open mic night will be Sunday 3rd of May to celebrate the opening of the 'When Words Fail' Exhibition at Craven Arts House. This open mic is for songwriters and spoken-word artists making their own original work. If you have a few of your own songs that you would like to share but, have never been sure if audiences would appreciate them, this is the evening for you.