So how did Rocking in the free world come about?????

Since the start of the Covid crisis in the UK I have tried to do what I can to help keep up staff morale on my wife’s unit at South Tyneside Hospital. I mainly did this by baking cakes, making roast dinners, getting snacks and sorting a proper coffee machine for them. Then one evening Jan and I were talking and she said that one thing that people are looking forwards to is being able to get together socially and have a good party!!! So then it started and initially the plan was to hire a venue for her unit and their friends and family and to see about getting our friend’s band Sons of Eden to play. We knew people would love Ben’s band putting on a gig for them as they had played at our wedding last April and everyone loved them.

So I spoke to Ben and he was well up for putting on a party so I contacted Sunderland Council regards to venues and Herrington Park was mentioned – hmmmm that maybe too big for what the EAU gang had in mind but why not make it bigger so we can put something on for more of these heroes. Ben and I chatted some more and decided that why not just go crazy and look at putting on a massive festival and put on an truly epic event and see who we can get involved.

A week further down the line we had a date booked and things got a bit crazy as we were talking to some big names about being involved!!! Fast forward two weeks and we were announcing that Emeli Sandé was performing at the festival and as the word has spread we have seen 10,000 people register for information and to be notified when the tickets will be released, our website crashed due to the volume of traffic and we are being inundated with local artists wanting to be involved in the day. We announced our second big name artist yesterday evening – Karen Harding so that is exciting as she also has strong links to the area and is a very busy lady at the moment with a platinum selling single, signing a new record deal and working with some big names so we are so grateful that she is making time to join the fun!!!!

There are a few other things we want to add to the festival so that it becomes a truly memorable event for people who come to see it and also the artists who are performing so the coming weeks are going to be hugely exciting as we grow the festival. What is amazing is seeing how excited people are about the festival and the positive impact that it is already having as that was one thing we wanted to do was to give people something to look forwards to once we get through the covid crisis. Ben and I are truly humbled by the support we have received so far and we are so excited and honoured to have the opportunity to put on the party of a life time for the people who are sacrificing so much for us all.