Share A Stage competiton launched

Launched today is a nationwide competition to find a young musician or band to win the chance to play at Glastonbury Festival.

Linzi Stoppard, one half of the electric violin duo Fuse, launched the competition called 'Share A Stage' at St Laurence School in Bradford on Avon. The aim of 'Share a Stage' is to raise awareness for Practice-a-thon, a CLIC Sargent initiative designed to encourage young people to practice their music and raise money for children with cancer.

At the launch Linzi and her fellow Fuse band member Ben Lee performed live to an audience made up of the school's music students and a group of young people from the area who are supported by CLIC Sargent. This group included Tom Hunt, a 17 year old from Bristol, who has recovered from extensive surgery and cancer treatment.

"CLIC Sargent is a fantastic charity which gave me and my family lots of help while I was going through my bone cancer treatment," says Tom, "The charity took me, along with five other young people, to the Glastonbury festival last year. I saw the Killers and it was amazing, so it's great that young people have a chance like this to play at the festival."

'Share a Stage' is open to 13-24 year olds who are part of a band or a practising musician of any genre. Entrants need to upload a short film of themselves playing either alone, or with their band, onto YouTube by Monday 5th May - for full competition details visit www.clicsargent.org.uk/music. Entries will then be judged by top music industry professionals, including the team that has run the festival's Emerging Talent Competition in previous years.

Not only will the lucky winner perform on the 'Late N Live stage' at Glastonbury, they will also get to share a slot with Fuse.

All schools and groups taking part get to keep 25% of any money raised; the other 75% goes to CLIC Sargent.

FUTURE GIGS