Brown Wimpenny's Annual Christmas Do

Brown Wimpenny is a folk collective spread across Manchester, London and Liverpool. This annual Christmas gathering brings its members and audience together at New Century Locker in Manchester.

Brown Wimpenny is a collective that draws on traditional folk music, treating its songs as shared property rather than the work of any single author. Its members live in Manchester, London and Liverpool, and the name comes from a nineteenth-century relative of one of the band's tenor banjoists. Its music spans pop, rock and indie.

The project began as informal Sunday jam sessions in a Manchester living room. It grew to around 25 members before settling at 11. Early gigs filled half the room they played in, and lyrics were passed round to the audience, reflecting an aim to narrow the distance between listeners and performers. The debut album, Long Live Brown Wimpenny, was released on Broadside Hacks.

One member describes the group as a joint social and creative project, valuing the everyday and the communal. New Century Locker hosts concerts and shows in Manchester, and this Christmas evening places the collective's participatory approach in that setting.