Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF) case studies

The Honey Pot project

Levelling up logo

We have received £4.8 million from the UK government through the Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF).

One of the local projects being supported by the funding is The Honey Box project.

What is the project?

Monthly livestream showcase of local musicians and bands.

Location

King Street Studios, Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Aim

To provide support and training to musicians and creatives.

Who?

  • PH Production Services
  • King Street Studios

Just a few steps from Newcastle-under-Lyme's busy King Street, a studio and event space is opening its doors to musicians, bands and performance artists from Staffordshire and Cheshire as part of an online showcase.

Based at King Street Studios, Honey Box Live sees three or four acts perform in front of a small audience and streamed live across YouTube and Facebook.

As well as providing vital performance experience for local musicians and artists, they get to experience a full day of technical setup, taking part in sound checks and a full show rehearsal before going live for each hour-long episode.

Peter Herbert is Director at PH Production Services and King Street Studios. He said:

This experience shows the musicians how this side of the industry can work. They also take away copies of their performance and they can share the videos across their social media channels, so it's a huge promotional experience for them as well.

But what we actually found was that, while people love playing the show, a lot of them didn't really use the content - and we started to ask the question, why?

Honey Box has been awarded a portion of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund - or 'Levelling Up' funding - through Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council to identify creative and marketing training needs and provide additional training in technical roles such as sound, lighting and video.

Peter added:

What the UKSPF funding will allow us to do is to engage with local musicians and creatives and ask the questions. We want to find out what they would like to learn about and what they'd like more information on  and then we will go out to the industry and find key people to be able to deliver that to them and give them that training and knowledge to promote themselves better.

Hopefully, this will benefit people within the borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme as it will increase employability on the technical side of things or for local artists to promote themselves and take the name of Newcastle-under-Lyme around the world.

Find out more

Contact King Street Studios: