Focus: Paige Temperley

Who are you and where are you from?
My name is Paige Temperley and I’m from Newcastle upon Tyne.

What is it you do?
I’m a performing Musician, I write, play some instruments and sing as a solo artist as well as part of Tall Shaves & Templo.

I’m also a Community Musician and have the pleasure of delivering on Community projects with organisations such as – We Make Culture, Sunderland Music Hub and Sage Gateshead to help other groups of people make music, ranging from toddlers and babies to elderly adults. 

How long have you been doing it?
​I graduated from my BA (Hons) Community Music degree in 2014 and pretty much went straight into gigging, writing and delivering workshops from there and I’m very grateful to be able to say I’ve never stopped since.

What inspires you?
People.

Tell us about your music.
​Currently I’m doing a real mix of stuff, I’ve got a new solo single coming out soon (6th Aug) called We’re Back (Living Amongst Men). I originally wrote it in response to a brief for a travel advert, then realised that I’d missed the submission date and so decided to release it as a single anyway! Over the past year I’ve been doing lots of learning around recording, production and mixing music, and so this one has been a bit of a DIY job, I’ve been very lucky to be learning from the very talented Lisa Murphy from the Production Room who has been so helpful and patient with me with this track and has made some nice finishing touches!

As well as this I’m a gigging musician and am very grateful to have places such as Stack, Filthys, Wonderbar, Hard Rock Cafe and the Botanist have me back to play in their venues!

As I mentioned earlier I’m also a Community Musician, I work in schools with my friend and colleague Ashleigh Lowes, to help students who might be struggling with their mental health find an outlet through music, we help them play instruments together, write, introduce them to music tech and also achieve their Arts Awards. They are a very inspiring bunch! 

As well as this, we’ll be working with We Make Culture this summer to visit Kinship families and go on a mini Front Street Songs tour of Sunderland visiting different outdoor locations to perform family fun songs packed with activities to local families. 

I’ve also been working with We Make Culture on a really lovely project called Singing Your Stories, whereby we call up elderly people on the phone, who may have been isolated over the past year to have a lovely chat, find out about their lives and write a song for them before recording and sending out CD’s to them. It’s been great to chat to some really nice and inspiring people on this and hear some wonderful stories.

I also work with various other community groups who are equally as brilliant but I think this gives you a good idea of what I do.

What have you got coming up in the future?
I’ll be working on another song commissioned project with We Make Culture called ‘Songs of the Streets’ over the summer which I’m doing alongside the brilliant Holly Rees. We’ll be looking for under the radar stories from the Sunderland area and are aiming to create some original music around these tales. We’ve heard some brilliant stories already so it’s a pretty exciting place to start! 

Where can people find out more about you?
​You can keep up with what I’m doing via my Instagram (@paigetemperley92), my Facebook page and my website.