ON July 10, Ilkley will be home to a possible world first: a garden music festival.

Ilkley Live will be a celebration of local talent where performers play in their gardens and the audience can move from venue to venue at their leisure.

Ilkley Live organiser, Dan Hammond sees it as a way for residents to start to enjoy new freedoms while keeping people safe: “Live music is so important and popular but we have all been deprived of it due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “We can’t find examples of anyone doing this before so it could be a first!’ “Strangely, the idea for Ilkley Live came from lockdown. On the last night of clapping for the NHS last year, a few people in our street played and sang outside. It really worked – it was great fun and really brought people together after so much separation.”

There will ten acts performing from 4pm to 9pm. There is a wide variety of music including classical, folk, jazz, pop and rock. For more information just search Ilkley Live on Facebook. Dan hopes that this could become a regular event: “We’ll see how it goes but we have loads of interest already so it could turn into something that performers and audience could look forward to each year.”