Lively Up! is a festival of music on tour curated by our award-winning Artistic Director, musician and producer, Gary Crosby OBE and produced by Dune Music in association with Tomorrow’s Warriors. Our aim is to present high quality new music, dance and visual art by diverse artists that resonates with the widest possible audience.

We work with some amazing new, emerging and established artists and, as far as possible, strive to commission new work from them so as to provide opportunities for them to create and present their most exciting work to our audiences.

Our inaugural festival in Autumn 2012 marked the 50th Anniversary of Jamaica’s independence with a celebration of the kaleidoscope of the island’s music and heritage, commissioning the hugely popular tribute to Bob Marley and The Wailers, Catch A Fire by Jazz Jamaica All Stars; a celebration of Jamaican saxophonist, Joe Harriott by the Nu Civilisation Orchestra, and paid tribute to the Windrush generation with two family-friendly programmes by Tomorrow’s Warriors.

In autumn 2013, we marked another significant anniversary: 50 years since civil rights activist, Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s historic I Have A Dream oration in which he and fellow leaders in the US Civil Rights Movement called for freedom, justice and equality for ALL people. We were very proud and excited to present new work by the Mercury/MOBO-award winning saxophonist and composer, Denys Baptiste and the rising star pianist and composer/arranger, Peter Edwards.

In summer 2014, we’re producing Love Motown! at Royal Festival Hall, London – another extravanganza with the extraordinary Jazz Jamaica All Stars and Urban Soul Orchestra, joined by vocalists Noel McKoy and Beverley Skeete, and a 200-voice Southbank Centre Voicelab Choir.