Shopping centre rocked by Teesside musical talent

October 8th 2024

The quality of Teesside’s music talent was there for all to see as Middlesbrough’s Dundas Shopping Centre staged its first Promoting Local concert.

Organiser Nicky Hargreaves said it was the ideal place to connect up-and-coming artists with their community: “That has become much tougher with the closure of so many venues and pubs.”

The Centre and the Dundas Indoor Market – the home of independent traders - already supports local musicians by piping their messages and songs to its shoppers. One in ten of all the tracks played are provided by Teesside’s bands and singers.

Six of them took to the stage, providing more than four hours of free entertainment for an audience including 17-year-old Northern School of Art fashion student Ella-Rose. “It’s really good because it’s able to attract people who might not be interested in the music, but hear this stuff and decide they actually quite like this. I hope they do it again,” she said.

Live music fan Neil, 45, from Coulby Newham said: “After lockdown a lot of musicians struggled to put on live events because places have closed and there’s not many venues around, so promoting new music is only a good thing.”

Laura Craig – the wife of Nigel, the bass player with the first band on stage Afraid to Sleep – said: “When he told me about it, I was surprised because I thought the acoustics in a shopping centre were going to be terrible. But they sounded great.”

Afraid to Sleep’s singer is Nicole Bean, who runs the Alta Ego shop in the Dundas Indoor Market. Her band was followed by the energetic 3 Day Reign and then Stokesley singer/songwriter Josh Atkinson, indie band Stockholm from Stockton, singer/songwriter Mary Elizabeth Webb and finally Into the Blue, also from Stockton. Into the Blue is fronted by Jake Diaz who helped organise and engineer the concert. Jake co-presents the Promoting Local show on Teesside’s The Red radio station alongside Nicky Hargreaves who said he hopes to put on similar events at the Dundas Shopping Centre in the future.

Nicky, who is a tech start up entrepreneur and boss of Music Monitor as well as a broadcaster, said: “The management and staff here couldn’t be more supportive. In many ways we’re doing the same thing: I’m supporting local artists and they’re supporting local traders. It’s great that we can bring this all together.” He also thanked local company M.A.S.S. for providing the sound equipment.

Dundas indoor market manager David Harris said: “I think people might have been surprised by the really high standard of all of the performers. They really deserve the sort of exposure we’re trying to give them. It was also great to see so many new people in the Centre who, perhaps for the first time, had a chance to visit our independent traders.”

And he added: “In the next couple of weeks we’re going to announce some big news about the Market which we’re really excited about.”