Our Changing Gear 2026 creators revealed

YSWN’s Changing Gear programme supports emerging women and gender-diverse music creators to make new electronic works, develop new technical skills and push creative boundaries.

After sifting through our largest pile of applications to date, our judging panel have selected the three Yorkshire-based artists who will take part in this year’s edition and create new music inspired by the 75th anniversary of the Peak District National Park. Read on to meet them all!

Eleanor Hooper is a Sheffield-based singer, composer and sound artist making lyrical, voice-centred work that moves between song, sound art and installation. Using layered vocals, extended voice, reverb and delay, she composes and produces sound design for interactive light and sound sculptures. Her practice is rooted in deep listening. She facilitates voice-led sound baths, leads deep listening sessions in nature, and her recordings carry themes of ecology, memory and embodied experience, including her debut EP FIBRES and the composition Sunshines On A Fallen Tree. As co-director of Pif-Paf, she is currently touring the outdoor sculpture installation …And Breathe.

Gilank are capturing the hearts of Bradford’s ambient electronic music lovers. Multi-musicians Alice Gilmour and shi Blank combine synths, midi controllers, contact mics, effects and loop pedals, with acoustic instruments including violin, cello, flute, percussion and vocals. Releasing regularly on their Bandcamp page, the duo have performed with santoor player Eeshar Singh at Undercliffe Cemetery for Bradford 2025; played at Wharf Chambers and Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds, and The Noise Upstairs in Todmorden; provided live music for Theatre in the Mill’s A Teaspoon of Shampoo, and had a song played on BBC Radio 6’s Freak Zone playlist.

Layla Legard is a Leeds-based vocalist and musician who draws her inspiration from landscape and place via archaeological research, imaginative and magical practices, and improvisation. She plays drums in the Welsh-language avant-goth band Tristwch y Fenywod, has released three albums with her experimental duo Hawthonn, and recently recorded an album with the folk band Wire Worms. She is currently working on a music and arts project called Axe Factory, which connects nuclear semiotics and neolithic archaeology in West Cumbria.

About Changing Gear

Now in its third year, our Changing Gear programme is supported by funding from PRS Foundation’s Talent Development Network and benefits women and gender-diverse electronic producers/composers whose work has not yet been widely performed in a professional context, as well as existing composers of acoustic music or members of groups who would like to increase their technical skills and develop as solo artists.

Thanks to everyone who applied and congratulations to our selected three! Look out for more details coming soon of the two performances taking place at Sheffield’s No Bounds festival and in the Peak District this autumn.

YSWN is a PRS Foundation Talent Development Network Partner supported by PPL – Phonographic Performance Ltd.