Artist Development
We help the music scene thrive with diverse talent and exciting new music.
Turner Sims supports musicians at every stage of their career. From performance opportunities for young musicians to mentoring for mid-career artists, we are busy helping live music thrive.
Turn It Up
An opportunity for mid-career artists
Turn It Up is a development opportunity for local musicians with 5-10 years of professional experience. We launched it in 2024, in association with SoCo Music Project, to enable artists to turn up the volume on their projects.
Turn It Up equips artists with:
- rehearsal space
- a headline slot at Turner Sims’ Summer Festival
- £3,000 research and development budget
- industry mentoring with access to knowledge and networks.
- marketing and PR support
Turn It Up is supported by funding from Arts Council England.
Pegasuses – our first Turn It Up artists
Pegasuses blew the selection panel away with an acoustic performance to secure their place as our first Turn It Up artists. The Indi-Folk duo benefited from industry mentoring, funding, and a headline slot at our Summer Festival.
Through Turn It Up, Pegasuses were able to scale up their usual duo to a full band featuring fellow Sotonians including Russell Marsden (Band of Skulls). They performed their debut album in full for the first time at Turner Sims’ Summer Festival on Friday 28 June 2024.
Vocalist Laura described being awarded the grant as ‘a huge validation’. She said ‘it confirms there is a place for our music, and that others are not only interested in what we have to say, but that they want to support us in our development as artists’.
They did us proud!
Applying for Turn It Up
Turn it Up is for individual artists/musicians who:
- live or work in Southampton or an SO postcode
- have 5-10 years of professional experience
- work in jazz, sound, folk, global, classical and/or electronic music or any point in-between
- are passionate about engaging diverse audiences through music
- want to hone their craft and build their professional career
- want support in navigating the music industry
We will be reopening Turn It Up for applications in January 2025. Sign up to our newsletter to be one of the first to hear about it.
Through Turn It Up we have been able to play an incredible venue we’ve dreamt of playing at for some time and also made it across the finish line with Sea of Joy, our debut album.
Performance opportunities
In addition to Turn It Up, we offer an array of performance opportunities including:
- free slots on the outdoor community stage at our Summer Festival
- gigs in the foyer, programmed by The Vibe Collective – 95% featuring artists under 25 year old
- support slots for artists performing in the hall
- gigs and concerts programmed in the hall by our Concert Hall Manager, Kevin Appleby
Take a look at What’s On to see all our latest artists. If you think you’d be a great fit for Turner Sims’ promoted series, please get in touch.
Alternatively you can hire the venue to present your own concert at Turner Sims.
