The Carol Clerk Bursary
Supporting new talent for music journalism in Northern Ireland
Apply Here
Dig With It magazine, in partnership with the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast, is set to launch a new writing bursary to develop female and non-binary music journalists in Northern Ireland.
This will be called the Carol Clerk Bursary. It is named in honour of a trailblazing music writer from Belfast. Carol wrote her first story for Melody Maker in 1974 when she was still at school (‘Bombs, Boredom and No Bands’). Eventually she became News Editor of Melody Maker and also wrote respected books on The Pogues, The Damned and Ozzy Osbourne.
The Carol Clerk Bursary will provide £3,500 towards professional equipment and resources for an upcoming music journalist (female or non-binary with a connection to Northern Ireland). There will be additional mentoring, feedback and training, with paid, printed commissions.
Sadly, Carol died of cancer in 2010, aged 55. Her obituary featured in The Guardian, you can read it here. The Carol Clerk Bursary is being launched with the blessing of her daughter Eve.
The project will begin with a call-out for new female and non-binary music writers. The contenders will be resident in Northern Ireland or born there. They will be asked to submit two pieces of music journalism for consideration. The deadline for application is 6pm on Monday 13th June 2022.
The bursary will be awarded by a panel of working music journalists, some of them former colleagues of Carol. The awardee will be given a financial award for professional equipment, research expenses plus personal mentoring and feedback from established music writers. A series of pieces from the awardee will feature in upcoming issues of Dig With It magazine. This will be fee-paying work. Ideally the mentors will also help to guide the writer towards other music and arts publications.
The pilot year of the Carol Clerk Bursary will be part-financed by a significant source. At the end of 2021, the Oh Yeah Music Centre was gifted a rare acetate of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Happy Xmas’ to auction off. There were only 50 copies of this acetate made, to mark the 50th anniversary of this remarkable song. Oh Yeah will auction this rare collectors item and donate 100% of the proceeds into funding year 1 of the ‘Carol Clerk Bursary’.
With a great stroke of serendipity, Carol was an acquaintance of Yoko Ono. You can read a conversation between Carol and Yoko here
“We are delighted to be launching this important bursary in partnership with Dig With It. It is a crucial element of our work to support people with ambitions of working in music through development and mentoring but also to help seek out opportunities, find pathways and signpost them in directions like this. To get behind the development of an emerging music writer is exciting and in Carol Clerk’s name it is an honour.” - Charlotte Dryden, Oh Yeah Music Centre
“Carol Clerk was a great journalist and a wonderful, kind-hearted person. I met her often during my time as a music writer in London and she was always encouraging and lit up by her work. It will be an honour to help celebrate Carol’s work by supporting a new generation of writing talent.” - Stuart Bailie, Dig With It magazine