Queer Folk
Queer Folk (Sophie Crawford and George Sansome) was created to amplify the voices of LGBTQIA+ performers, foster collaborations, and encourage the building of LGBTQIA+ community within the folk, roots, and traditional music scene.
We want to raise awareness of LGBTQIA+ history – past and present – by highlighting queer narratives within traditional music, dance and story.
Sophie Crawford is a folk musician and performer from London. She recorded her debut album ‘Silver Pin’ in 2018 with Oliver Coates and her second album ‘People I Have Known’ in 2020. She played on the Grammy nominated album ‘Amelie the Musical’ in 2020 and toured with the show from 2019-2020. As an actor musician she was the first woman to play the Songwoman in ‘War Horse’ on the West End and has toured internationally with ‘Translunar Paradise’ with Ad Infinitum. She runs the Harrison Folk Singaround and the poetry and music night and podcast Patterned Ground.
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George Sansome is a traditional folk singer and guitarist based in Leeds. His debut album was released in 2020 and was listed as one Songlines magazine’s “Essential 10 Folk Albums of 2020”. George has been a member of BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award nominated trio, Granny’s Attic, since 2011, with whom he has released 4 albums and toured across the UK and Europe. In 2020 he was invited by Janis Ian to record a song for her Better Times project.
What is Foundry?
FOUNDRY 2022 is a new residency opportunity at Sage Gateshead; which makes our Sage Two performance space available to artists for 4 days of intensive development and rehearsal time, handing the venue over to musicians making new work in an unprecedented way.
Queer Folk’s Foundry Residency Plans
In our past few months of research we’ve gathered a lot of source material of queer folk songs so we’re really looking forward to getting stuck in to creating arrangements and properly making some music together! We’re also excited to work on queer folk songs in collaboration with other musicians and explore queerness in folk music together.