VERMONT singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell will make her Pocklington Arts Centre debut on February 22 in a spring and summer season of music with a strong female presence.

Beth Nielsen Chapman, Barbara Dickson, Kathryn Williams and Jacqui Dankworth all are booked for Pock, along with Joan Armatrading on her first ever solo tour later in the year.

Anais Mitchell has been nominated for two 2014 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards for Child Ballads, her collection of traditional Celtic and British Isles ballads recorded with Jefferson Hamer.

As announced previously in What’s On, Grammy-nominated American songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman will promote her new album, Uncovered, on the opening night of her tour, for which she will prepare with two days of rehearsals at the arts centre.

Scottish folk singer Barbara Dickson and fellow musician Rab Noakes have been friends since they were 17, when they sang and played together in assorted line-ups in the Sixties folk revival. Now they have re-united after a long hiatus to perform folk songs, classic pop and self-written favourites, playing on Dickson’s strengths as an interpreter of new and traditional songs with a contemporary edge and Noakes’s prowess as a singer-songwriter. Tour dates include Pock on April 4.

Singer-songwriter Kathyrn Williams, who played Selby Town Hall last October, returns to her more regular stomping ground of Pocklington on May 2 to promote her 2013 album, Crown Electric.

Jazz chanteuse Jacqui Dankworth marked her 50th birthday by writing and recording the album Live To Love to reflect on that landmark anniversary last year. Not only jazz, but also folk, soul and blues feature in her adventurous repertoire, as can be witnessed on May 22.

Like Beth Nielsen Chapman, Ivor Novello Award winner Joan Armatrading will take the opportunity to rehearse for her “last major tour” for four days at Pocklington. She will play there on September 29, but you should keep your ear to the ground for news of further Armatrading activity in September.

Further shows include The Troggs, led by vocalist Chris Allen, on February 26; folk instrumental duo Spiers & Boden, on March 23, on their last tour as a duo before concentrating on folk big band Bellowhead; and Leeds band The Dunwells with their blend of English rock and American roots music, on April 3.

“They’re already big in America and this is going to be their year in Britain too,” says arts centre manager Janet Farmer.

On April 25, BBC Radio 6Music presenter and author Stuart Maconie discusses his new book and Radio 2 series, The People’s Songs, a social history of modern Britain told through pop singles from the Second World War onwards.

Folk stalwarts Fairport Convention line up with Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg, Chris Leslie, Ric Sanders and Gerry Conway on duty for the BBC Lifetime Achievement Award winners on May 8, and 10CC’s Graham Gouldman presents Heart Full Of Songs, a retrospective of his songwriting career since teenage days, in the company of today’s 10cc band members, Rick Fenn, Mick Wilson and Mike Stevens, on May 13.

• For tickets, phone 01759 301547 or visit pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk