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 (pictured left) 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.”