Joan Prior Awards 2024

Calling young adjacent performers (aka aged from 18 to 25 years)!
You wanna chance to play at the Wellington Folk Festival over Labour Weekend, and at a show at Moon in November?
Enter the 2024 Joan Prior Young Performers Award (JPA). This is run by Acoustic Routes (The Wellington Folk Centre). Up to 7 performers will be offered full weekend passes to Wellington Folk Festival and will feature in a Young Performers concert on the Balladeer Stage at the Festival. (The Balladeer stage is a friendly cafe-style performance venue.)
Following the Festival, the JPA winners will appear in a special Young Performers Showcase at the Moon Bar in Newtown, on Sunday, November 17.
The award is open to singers and instrumentalists, and to performers of traditional as well as contemporary and original material, living in the wider Wellington region. Applicants can be a solo performer, or a duo or trio. All genres of music are acceptable. As a general guide, this includes the wide variety of mainly acoustic music performed at folk festivals.
You can find full details of the Joan Prior Award and the entry form on the Acoustic Routes website
The deadline for entries is Sunday, September 15. If you know of young performers who may be interested, please pass this on. There’s a dedicated email address for Joan Prior Award queries on the website.
Here’s Ella and Toby (My Cosmic Girl) doing their thing last year.
Photo of two people playing guitars and singing into microphones.

Ella and Toby performing at the Joan Prior Award concert, 2023