The Shed Comes To Town this weekend when Malton Market Place hosts a two-day musical extravaganza.

The free outdoor event is the result of a collaboration between Brawby arts melting pot The Shed and Malton and Norton Town Centre Management and is timed to coincide with The Shed's 11th birthday.

On stage will be some of the most popular performers to appear at Brawby Village Hall over the years, plus the Spinkfest showcase for young Ryedale bands.

Tomorrow's line-up will be the Snake Davis Band, Hank Wangford and the Lost Cowboys, Billy Jenkins and the Blues Collective, the Joe Townsend Band and the Spinkfest "mega mosh".

Spinkfest, the brainchild of Pickering teenager Mike Spink, with support from the Pied Piper Project workshop scheme, presents Chu Ma Shu, Meyssan, Last To Leave, Jonny Moped, Fragile and Lauren Thackray. Within these groups are pupils from Malton School, Ryedale School, Norton College and Lady Lumley's School, Pickering.

On Saturday too, look out for the nifty needlework of Wendy Moorby, the reigning world champion fastest knitter, who will give a speed knitting demonstration to mark the event's sponsorship by Sirdar, the Wakefield hand-knitting company.

On Sunday afternoon, the emphasis is on jazz, in the company of trombonist Annie Whitehead and her band, pianist David Gordon and his trio and the Joe Townsend Band, led by fiddle-playing Joe with his brother Kubryk on bass.

Barnsley poet, broadcaster and Shed scribe Ian McMillan will compere the event. "If the weather holds, it'll be 'Woodstockish' with thousands of people there, and just the right kind of music for a summer's day," he says.

Ian believes that taking The Shed outdoors is liberating, a chance to spread out from the confines of the Lilliputian village hall in Brawby.

"For the birthday party, we're loosening the corset. The corset is Brawby Village Hall and we love Brawby Village Hall but every now and then it becomes more of a restricting device than a village hall. So we've gone round the back and fiddled for a bit and here we are in Malton town centre, breathing luxuriously and blinking in the bright light," he says.

Initial plans to hold the annual Great Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race as part of the weekend festival have run aground. However, all the other Shed ingredients will be looking to rise to the occasion.

u BBC North Yorkshire Radio York will broadcast its Saturday afternoon show live from Malton Market Place from 2pm to 6pm tomorrow. Presenter Dougie Weake will enter into The Shed birthday party spirit by playing music from artists who have there over the past 11 years. Expect interviews with some of the performers too.

The Shed Comes To Town, Malton Market Place, tomorrow, 3pm to 10.30pm, and Sunday, noon to 3pm. Free event; no booking or tickets required. For more information, visit the website www.theshed.co.uk

Updated: 10:55 Friday, June 06, 2003