Hello Thor's Nick and Tom having a judge
The event which claims to be Nottingham’s favourite “felt tips and folk night” - Jumpers for Goalposts - has, for nearly ten years, been giving a stage (well, a space in the corner of the bar, or sometimes on the bar) to some of Nottingham’s finest musicians and DJs. More importantly, however, it has been keeping Nottingham’s competitive crafters busy, with a monthly creative craft competition battling it out for “mega” prizes.
Now, as the organisers are preparing to pack up their pipe cleaners for the last time (this Thursday’s will be the last Jumpers for the foreseeable future), we take a look back at ten years of fuzzy felt and fun.
Jumpers for Goalposts was set up in 2006 by Hannah and Pete Conway, the brains behind eco-friendly screen printing business I Dress Myself. Initially conceived as a “musical jumble sale”, Jumpers for Goalposts quickly found its place as a night where one could mess around with googly eyes and plasticine and the like, whilst enjoying live music and DJs.
Pete Conway explains: “I think the first Jumpers was 3rd May 2006 with live music from The Bonsai Projects. I can't remember what the competition was but I remember that first prize was a trophy I'd made that consisted of a Barbie-type doll nailed to a block of wood with a bit of paint and glitter on. The winner of this trophy was almost in tears with the pure emotion of it all…A proto version of Fists played one night, and Fearnie of Sleaford Mods fame also played one time as “Marks Brother”. I remember a Britney Spears new haircut competition when she shaved her head, and a very funny and slightly sinister Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee caption competition...”
Having started it up, Hannah and Pete eventually passed the mantle and the metaphorical keys to the craft box over to a succession of party starters, zine makers, musicians, promoters and artists who have kept the night running ever since. This ragtag crew has included the brains behind Shadowplay Fanzine, Not in Nottingham, Supernight, Hello Thor Records, Joey Chickenskin, the Yeah I’ll Play It Later DJs and fourbeatwalk.
The craft competition (usually based around something topical), live music, DJ, judging and prize-giving are the staple elements around which Jumpers for Goalposts has been built, but frequently the night became much more odd and eclectic than that.
There were the two tiny instrument orchestra specials, most memorably when a bar full of people playing glockenspiels, ukuleles, kazoos, tin whistles, melodicas and stylophones created a homage to Delia Derbyshire, by performing the Dr Who theme. Over and over again.
There was the Christmas board games special – including a game of human Guess Who (which, unsurprisingly, turned out to make no sense and collapsed into a sea of heckling) and a game of Operation, where body parts crafted by participants were attached to DJ Daddy Bones.
There have been lip sync competitions, Christmas karaoke, a night full of chanting Mexicans, a Christmas “house band” (Santo, Klaus & No-Elvis), a fake French girl group, a musical, a nativity... Craft competition rules have ranged topical commentary on the phone hacking scandal (“pick a celebrity and make some sensational shit up about them, through the medium of craft, in memory of the News of the World”) to instructions related, loosely, to the musician performing (the winner of the insect-themed competition on the night Jake Bugg played was the brilliant “Big Daddy Longlegs”). Sometimes the competition is as simple as “make a giraffe”, and someone always makes a penis.
Jake Bugg plays his "worst gig ever"
Kate Webborn of fourbeatwalk: “My favourites include the Easter one where Joey Chickenskin led a parade out into the square of everyone's Easter bonnets, the lip sync nights which always ended in wigs and madness and Bonnie Tyler, and any night when the band hadn't been to Jumpers and was totally baffled by everything and left before the craft competition was judged…there was the Jumpers when everyone made Christopher Biggins get well soon cards - which we posted that evening before we could think better of it…and of course the mega prizes, including gems from Rob’s Records, the rammel from around our houses or crap from Wilkos and the First Prize Bottle of Wine (donated by the Alley Café); the people who had just gone to the Alley Cafe for a nice drink and ended up joining in and winning prizes and getting totally into it- the first dates, the couple celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary, and the wonderful regulars who would end up making something out of pipe cleaners and felt and googly eyes and getting totally invested in the prize-giving.”
Alex Lawson of Shadowplay Fanzine, who ran the night from 2007 to 2008: “The themes we had included: rockabilly robots, fantastic fetishes, rock'n'roll egg painting and circus freaks…my favourite ever entry was a box of Credit Crunch. God knows what theme that was to do with, but it captured the mood of the time in 2008! For some reason people enjoyed free craft nights when they had no cash.”
Several of Nottingham’s recent musical success stories have performed at Jumpers over the years and many of them have even found themselves judging the craft competition and awarding mega prizes. Natalie Duncan played her piano on the bar, Georgie proved a very enthusiastic judge, and Jake Bugg’s visit to Jumpers in 2010 even makes it into his biography, twice (“I played the worst gig ever…”).
At some point in the summer of 2009 Jumpers for Goalposts even tried to spawn its own musical subculture – the “non-proper band scene”, which encouraged anyone to form a band for the night. One band formed for that particular night – Burly Nagasaki – went on to release an album and perform at Dot to Dot.
On occasion the craft competition has got out of hand. There was one time when one attender took such offence to a competition in tribute to the late Patrick Swayze she tried to sabotage the live performance by Rory McCarthy. On another night a particularly competitive (and unusually aggressive) crafter squared up to the judge, when he was not awarded a prize. Bear in mind that prizes have, at times, included things like a toy wasp sellotaped to a tiny grey mannequin hand…
Competitive crafting and creative lunacy also spread out of Nottingham, as Tom Whalley (Hello Thor / Not in Nottingham / BBC 6 Music) explains: “Jumpers spawned a London-based spin off night called Come Get Felt Up that featured in Time Out and on Vice. One time we got shut down because a bad crowd of bankers turned up while I was playing some semi-aggressive hip hop.”
For now, though, Jumpers for Goalposts will be taking a break – not before one last bash this Thursday, at the Alley Café from about 8.30pm. Why not get your Christmas craft on and mourn the passing of one of Nottingham’s most unique nights.
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