Mental health charity Tiny Changes, established just over a year ago in memory of Frightened Rabbit co-founder Scott Hutchinson, have announced an upcoming weekend of lockdown gigs to raise money for a Coronavirus emergency relief fund. Adopting the moniker Tiny Changes, the series of online performances – featuring guest appearances from music’s strongest talents, such as Frank Turner, Matt Maltese and Bill Ryder-Jones – will be staged within each performer’s homes. Listeners tuning in are encouraged to donate whatever proceeds they are able to contribute, via the JustGiving fundraising site on a designated Tiny Changes page.
In an announcement tweet made earlier today (May 29th) on their official Twitter page, @tinychanges, the organisation declared that, “Music has the ability to connect people and build community.” Taking place on June 20th/21st, the digital festival is of great importance to charity co-founder Grant Hutchinson, whose work beside that of being a professional musician is raising awareness for mental health issues. As the organisation states in their Twitter bio, “Tiny Changes is a Scottish mental health charity set up in memory of Scott Hutchison with a focus on young people and children.”
Music has the ability to connect people and build community. With this in mind, we came up with Tiny Gigs, a Tiny Changes fundraiser. On 20+21 June, these great artists will livestream via our Facebook page. You can pay what you can if you can at https://t.co/7l3YGOvtkE pic.twitter.com/9IVykLq3SY
— Tiny Changes (@tinychanges) May 29, 2020
Hutchinson told NME in a recent interview, “The message that we’ve been trying to promote throughout all this is togetherness, even at the moment when we’re not physically together.” What he most looks forward to is the “great opportunity to bring new artists and young people to perform, speak and engage and have something to … celebrate.”
As Grant elaborates, the importance of this event is its potential to restore some music fans to a semblance of normality, “giving them these experiences that people feel they’re missing out on. That’s vital. People are finding a lot of comfort and getting a lot of joy out of these parties,” he said, referring to the online listening parties that had been hosted by The Charlatans’ frontman Tim Burgess, whom is one of the featured acts of the future Tiny Gigs event.
OK!
Checking where we all are for this @DexysOfficial listening partyWhat town? What city?
Shout up!! pic.twitter.com/cZTGcn4iCT
— Tim Burgess (@Tim_Burgess) May 29, 2020
“It’s amazing,” Grant concludes, adding that he hopes to establish more listening parties like this in the weeks to come. And like that, our enormous world can begin to feel a little more reconnected in these strange and unsettling times…
