An Interview with ‘Bloom Sessions’

Bloom Sessions is a youth-led creative project dedicated to promoting women and those of marginalised genders in Yorkshire.

As a not-for-profit organisation, the promotion company has been working with creatives since October 2020 after being granted money from Yorkshire-based charity NYMAZ, as well as the council-led scheme Leeds Inspired, and Come Play with Me.

After meeting through the charity NYMAZ, a youth development organisation that hopes to promote young people’s development through music, it inspired the co-directors Cheïma Tuysuzian Bouajila, Claire Hamilton and Izzy Hobbs to continue supporting others through music in the community.

While starting out by spotlighting one illustrator and one band every month, with the illustrator creating the poster for the live session, Bloom Sessions now focus on creating live events, such as an afternoon of Jazz, Soul, and R&B which they hosted at Headrow House on the 12^{th of} December 2o21.

Poster for Come Play with Me x Bloom Sessions, December 2021. Illustrated by Tanya Shanduka.

Bloom Sessions aims to encourage engagement with music and art regardless of background as they felt there is a “definite lack of visibility, especially those of marginalised genders, in the North”. Therefore, they act as a bridge between the Arts and the community.

Speaking about why they chose to start this promotion company in the North of England, Hamilton said that the people here are “canny as owt, and so welcoming from the source”, with hopes to expand further in the future.

Bloom Sessions uses their platform to question and challenge the way in which “promoters won’t give enough space to women or other marginalised genders” and when space is made, the results can be “quite shocking… where they only make effort to work with women to prove a point” or tokenise artists for their benefit.

Hamilton suggests that “…promoters should be taking more responsibility for that” and that as an organisation, Bloom Sessions are: “working with promoters to not only introduce them to the way that we work but also help them connect with artists.”

There are also hopes that their project also will inspire changes to these relationships.

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You can keep up to date with what Bloom Sessions are doing and what’s coming up next, by heading to their Website, Instagram and Twitter.

p.s. If you are in need of some new music, check out their 2021 music wrap up here.( We can vouch, the picks are greattt!)