Season's greetings & summer festivals

As 2020 draws to a close, we want to take this opportunity to celebrate the six fabulous musicians who took up the annual Ockham Collective residency this year. Nobody could have foreseen what a disrupted year it would prove to be, but our residents soldiered on – gigging, hosting workshops and offering face-to-face lessons when they could, and pivoting to Zoom lessons during lockdown.

Given the disruption, we've offered all of our 2020 residents the option of continuing with the programme for another year, and we're pleased to say that most of them have taken up the opportunity. They'll be joined by an exciting bunch of new residents in 2021 – not all of whom are musicians. We'll be announcing the final line-up in early February. Watch this space!

In the meantime, you can catch Sonia Wilson performing as half of Sonia & Nigel at the five-day Whare Flat Folk Festival in North Taieri, Dunedin. As well as hosting day sessions they'll be playing the main stage on the evening of New Year's Day, alongside Nadia Reid and Reb Fountain. Joe Harrop's Black Quartet will be playing with L.A.B in New Plymouth on January 9 and again at the One Love festival in Tauranga on Waitangi Day. The Black Quartet will also be playing their own set at the Auckland Folk Festival in Kumeu on January 30.

We're very grateful to Emily Roughton (pictured top centre), David Ward (top right), Kingsley Spargo (bottom left), Mat Fieldes (bottom centre) and Sonia Wilson (bottom right) for joining us this year, and especially to Joe Harrop (top left) for jump-starting this new leg in the OC journey. And on behalf of the entire Ockham Collective we'd like to wish a very happy, healthy and peaceful Christmas and New Year to everyone who attended lessons, workshops and performances in our creative precincts in 2020!