Introduction
The scheme is funded by the Arts Council of England, Northern arts, Yorkshire Arts and North West Arts to support the tours of New Music across the greater Northern region of England.

Initially designed in April 1998 as a one-off fund to bring new audiences to the Arts, and to take new music to existing audiences, it has now developed into an on-going scheme supporting 12 or more music tours each year. As well as awarding grants to support the performances, the scheme can help promoters and musicians to develop their ideas into viable music tours, suggest marketing strategies, and if required can offer advice on useful contacts or budgetting. Looking to the future, the scheme aims to leave a legacy which may assist future music promotions, performers, venues, arts organisations and of course audiences, in the North.

The current round of the scheme runs through 2002 until early 2003 and is being administered by Generator North East.

The scheme has several objectives, principally :

• to encourage audiences traditionally indifferent to new music to experiment with it
• to offer existing audiences for new music a wider choice, and to encourage new audiences
• to enable the performances to be seen across the Greater Northern region.