Sheffield music producer teams up with poet who has cerebral palsy to make charity EP

Cobbler at the BBC Contains Strong Language festival

Jim Taylor, who produces music under the name Cobbler, and Daniel Kay teamed up to make an EP for the charity Scope after getting in touch via the social network.

Cobbler first connected with Daniel in March when he was looking for poets to collaborate with and they soon hit it off.

Daniel has cerebral palsy, which made it difficult for him to read his poems. When he first got in touch with Cobbler, his mum helped him read out his work but it wasn’t very clear when mixed with music as she has a strong Black Country accent. He then tried Apple’s text to speech but couldn’t continue due to copyright reasons. In the end, he invited voiceover artists to do the readings for the fundraising project.

The charity EP, The Words of Daniel Kay, was released last Friday, August 13, and 10 copies were sold during the weekend, raising £50.

It is available exclusively on Bandcamp, with all profits going to Scope, a national disability charity. They chose to support Scope because it has been really helpful for Daniel and he felt it would be good to give something back.

Cobbler said: “I wanted to raise awareness for Daniel’s poetry and use this platform for his words to shine. He’s a really talented guy but he has more difficulties in getting out there and performing than most poets have.

“He got in touch with me through Twitter and sent me a track when I was looking for poets to collaborate with and it just went from there. He has difficulties with speech but he is really chatty over text.

“I think Daniel proves this, just because you have a disability, that doesn’t mean you aren’t artistic or you haven’t got your own ideas. It’s quite easy to overlook that.

“I chose to use Bandcamp because the majority of money we raise on this platform will be able to go to Scope. I will eventually put it on Spotify and other streaming platforms once people kind of stop making donations.”

To download the EP, visit: https://cobbler.bandcamp.com/album/the-words-of-daniel-kay-charity-ep-to-raise-money-for-scope.