Union Jill (Helen Turner and Sharon Jagger) are women making performances (mostly) about women but for a multi-gendered audience. This practice led research allows a dialogue between artist and participant, amplifying lesser heard voices and co-creating outputs. Union Jill shows are made up of self-penned songs that tell stories. This narrative song format is borrowed from the folk tradition and has enabled us to infiltrate the folk circuit with our original (rather than traditional) songs, by capitalising on this appropriation of style. When we are booked as professional act at a folk club the request is for two 45 minute sets, often with floor singers before one or both sets, and an interval with a raffle in-between. Our sets mostly include us introducing each song and giving it a context or elaborating on the story it tells. This means that whilst the songs themselves contain a story this is carefully augmented and curated into each linear 45 minute set and in turn the full show has a considered narrative emotional journey. We ensure each set has a balance of ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’ songs and of songs that call for audience participation as well as those that do not.

Set 1: https://doi.org/10.25421/yorksj.31389829
Set 2: https://doi.org/10.25421/yorksj.31389964