Threshold Festival 2017: first details announced
Irish songwriter Hannah Peel will play Threshold Festival 2017, while the festival will be the first event to take place at the new Baltic Creative site at Cain's Brewery
Liverpool's grassroots festival of music and art Threshold returns to the Baltic Triangle for its seventh year in 2017 – this time occupying space in Cain's Brewery, as part of Baltic Creative's redevelopment of the venue.
Threshold will be the first event to be staged as part of the Cain's project, a 10-year deal launched in July 2016 that will transform 45,000 sq ft of disused warehouses at the site into a range of innovative spaces for artists, designer-makers and the creative industries.
The current phase of the project involves the setting up of a new artist-led hub containing affordable artist studios, gallery spaces, workshop units and log-burning mezzanine studios, plus a central café and a large event space. Artist-led gallery The Royal Standard are among the first main tenants to move in.
Showcasing emerging music and visual art from the Northwest region and beyond, Threshold 2017 will be headed up by Irish artist Hannah Peel, whose recently released LP Awake But Always Dreaming features a duet with Wild Beasts' Hayden Thorpe.
An album about memory – from the formation of memories to the devastating loss or slowing down of them through damage to the mind – Awake But Always Dreaming was made with Peel's longtime collaborator Erland Cooper of Erland & The Carnival, and follows up her 2011 debut The Broken Wave.
Described as "a latter-day Delia Derbyshire" by The Observer, Peel's aesthetic seems a good fit for Threshold's DIY ethos. Her most recent music also seems fitting with Threshold's 'Darkness and Light' theme. Of the album's subject matter, Peel says: “I’ve read one in three of us will die with dementia, and a third of us are connected to someone with dementia through family and friends. 850,000 people in the UK alone have it now and two in three people affected will be women. It’s quite remarkable really, and it’s getting worse”.
Threshold Festival of Music & Arts
31 March-1 April 2017
For further line-up announcements, keep an eye on theskinny.co.uk/news.