AT MIDDAY on Saturday April 11, We Shall Overcome (WSO) will launch 12 hours of music and poetry online as part of their Isolation Festival.

Streaming on a Facebook group of the same name, it features a great line-up, with the likes of Grace Petrie, Attila The Stockbroker, The Men They Couldn’t Hang frontman Phil “Swill” Odgers, Glasgow's The Wakes and festival organiser Joe Solo himself among those taking part.

Over the last few years, artists, activists and organisers have raised money through live WSO events for those most hit hardest by austerity. But coronavirus meant that “we were about to hit the buffers,” says Joe.

“Our work with the homeless, particularly in Manchester, relies heavily on funding from gigs and no gigs means no funding, so we had to get creative.

“The closer we got to full lockdown, the more I started thinking we needed to be ahead of the curve.”

So he hatched the plan for an all-day virtual festival, featuring friends and comrades from the four corners of Britain, created a GoFundMe page for the cause and put out the word.

"Musicians are always the first to volunteer when there's a crisis,” he says, “and we could have filled the bill four times over with the offers we received. It was an incredible response. We will be playing for free but asking for a voluntary donation to help continue the struggle.”

The Facebook page WSO Isolation Festival — Sat April 11th 2020 is the festival “site” and the “stage” will be the pinned post at the top, the first one to be seen.

“We'll have a schedule like any festival and the pinned post will change when the next act hits the stage,” Joe explains. “All the sets will stay in the group for people to catch up and watch again. We’ve worked around the obstacles and we’re confident it will succeed."

So confident is he of success that the event already has festival T-shirts. “They will be the must-have, stay-home shirt of the year!” Joe quips.

WSO has now been a part of the political music scene for five years, running more than 1,100 events and raising an estimated £500,000 for the poorest and most vulnerable as Tory austerity bites deep into communities, and it looks like such work will be needed more than ever in the months and years to come.

“All that help raised by the collective efforts of thousands of amazing people has shored up foodbanks, homeless outreach, soup kitchens, crisis centres, youth projects and refugee support,” Joe explains.

“We are massively proud of that, but when we finally beat Covid-19, the financial fallout is going to make austerity look like a lottery win. We’ll be ready. We’ll have to be.”

The Isolation Festival will bring some much-needed light to an Easter Saturday that many will spend alone in desperate need of some company and in fear of an uncertain future. That was part of Joe’s thinking.

“Music lifts people’s spirits and encourages and inspires more than any other medium on earth and it’s ironic that when musicians are needed most, we're not able to do our thing,” he says.

“The festival will allow us to build bridges up and down the land and play you what will feel like your own personal gig and bring us all together for something unique.

“In the apocalyptic tone of everything you read and hear, we will be humanity fighting back.”