arch Birmingham Live Music and Brexit – Report

Over the last 12 months I have been developing a research project with colleagues Patrycja Rozbicka (Aston University) and Adam Behr (Newcastle University). The work aims to explore how the live music sector in the UK will develop coping responses around possible outcomes of the Brexit process. The project will use the city of Birmingham as a case study.

Today the first fruits of our work are available, via the release of our report: “Birmingham Live Music and Brexit“. The report can be downloaded as a PDF here.  There is also a summary of the report available on the Music Week website.

The report reveals Brexit-related worries voiced by policymakers, academics, industry figures and media representatives during a one-day event we held in Birmingham earlier this year. Organisations who contributed to the report included Arts Council England, Birmingham City Council, Birmingham Music Archive, Birmingham Music Coalition, Hare & Hounds Birmingham and Leftfoot Venues, The Musicians’ Union, Town Hall & Symphony Hall Birmingham, and West Midlands Combined Authority.

One of the main issues raised was the way that Brexit could lead to fewer artists and productions travelling to the UK from Europe, which in turn could mean a marked decrease in the number of ‘music tourists’ visiting the country and region specifically for live music experiences.

Other key issues raised in the report include:

• Concerns that the summer festival season of 2020 would be negatively impacted by Brexit. It’s feared that the potential costs of running big events could spiral and lead to heavy losses due to disrupted supply chains.
• Brexit is likely to generate a massive administrative cost for UK-based artists. While larger acts will have labels, promoters and investors to support them, smaller acts will not be able to afford such costs to build up their presence on the continent through touring and cultural exchanges.
• The future of a high number of production companies located in the UK – which provide lighting, staging and tour management – are also clouded by Brexit, with a large number of jobs possibly moved elsewhere to minimise disruption and maximise sales.

We currently have a funding bid around the wider project under consideration, and we hope to have positive news on that very soon with a view to beginning our ambitious programme of research at some point next year.

Crucial to exploring the problems, questions and opportunities related to Brexit will be the mapping exercise we have built into our research plans. One of the key tasks in arriving at an understanding of the issues facing the sector will be an exercise that will attempt to create a map of the ecology of Birmingham’s live music sector, including not only music venues but also related businesses and services. With so many complex, inter-related parts and relationships to map, we will rely on partnerships with local stakeholders to help us gather useful and reliable data. The event that helped generate this report demonstrates the willingness of stakeholders to work with us on this exercise, and reveals the potential for growing further key partnerships in the UK.

Dr Craig Hamilton

arch BCMCR – New Thinking #1 – 2019/20

We are pleased to announce the publication of “New Thinking #1”, the first in a new series of ‘zine-style publications developed by researchers within BCMCR.

This first issue came about following a BCMCR strategy meeting in July. Ahead of that meeting our centre director, Nick Gebhardt, had asked each of the research-active staff scheduled to attend to prepare and deliver a 2-minute talk around their research. Each were asked to frame that presentation as a response to the following prompt:

“Start with an object, event, theory, problem, technological innovation, inspiration, etc., and tell a story of where you’re going with your work, and feel free to experiment with the form/content. The emphasis is on lucid writing, imagination, and brevity!” 

The resulting presentations were unique and engaging, and together they provided a new perspective on the work being developed across the centre. We decided to pull them together into a ‘zine-style publication that could be presented as a snapshot manifesto of BCMCR at this point in time.

Our hope is that you will enjoy reading this publication, and that it will provide you with a route in to the exciting and innovative research we are developing here at BCMCR.

You can download a PDF copy here, or read it online here. There are also a limited number of printed copies available. Please contact Craig Hamilton if you would like to discuss getting one of those.

A second issue of New Thinking will be published in 2020, with more to follow as the series develops.

arch Insights from the Home of Metal Symposium

A key participant in the recent Home of Metal Symposium and Workshop at BCMCR was the online station MMH.

The MMH team covered a range of events related to the HoM heritage season as well as interviewing speakers and attendees at the symposium and workshop. Images of the day and links to audio and video interviews are below.

Gallery

Home Of Metal Symposium

https://mmhradio.co.uk/home-of-metal-symposium/

News

Black Sabbath Bridge Unveiling

https://mmhradio.co.uk/black-sabbath-bridge-and-bench-the-unveiling-ceremony-canal-and-broad-street-birmingham-june-26th-2019/

Home Of Metal Exhibition Opening

https://mmhradio.co.uk/black-sabbath-50-years-home-of-metal-present-a-major-exhibition-celebrating-the-band-their-legacy-and-the-fans-birmingham-museum-art-gallery-preview-june-25th-2019/

Video Interviews

The History Of MMH – The Home Of Rock Radio

https://mmhradio.co.uk/how-did-mmh-radio-start-watch-here/

Home Of Metal Volunteer Bill Sneyd

https://mmhradio.co.uk/home-of-metal-volunteer-bill-sneyd-talks-everything-home-of-metal/

Alexander Milas – Former Editor & Chief Of Metal Hammer

https://mmhradio.co.uk/alexander-milas-talks-to-dj-adam-onslaught/

Kevin Hoffin Criminology Lecturer

https://mmhradio.co.uk/kevin-hoffin-criminology-lecturer-of-birmingham-city-university-interview-the-home-of-metal/

Black September Falls

https://mmhradio.co.uk/black-september-falls-interview-home-of-metal/

Dan Weston – Birmingham Metal Society

https://mmhradio.co.uk/dan-weston-university-of-birmingham-metal-society-home-of-metal/

Edwards Banchs – Heavy Metal Africa Paperback

https://mmhradio.co.uk/edwards-banchs-heavy-metal-africa-book-interview-the-home-of-metal/

Matt Noble – Diaries Of Doom

https://mmhradio.co.uk/matt-noble-diaries-of-doom-interview-the-home-of-metal/

Nolan Stolz – Experiencing Black Sabbath Paperback

https://mmhradio.co.uk/nolan-stolz-experiencing-black-sabbath-book-talks-to-mmh-radio-the-home-of-metal/

Tom Cardwell – Creating Battle Jackets

https://mmhradio.co.uk/tom-cardwell-talks-to-mmh-radio-the-home-of-metal/

Youth Club Archive

https://mmhradio.co.uk/matt-jamie-talk-about-the-youth-club-archive-with-mmh-radio-the-home-of-metal/

Black Sabbath Fan

https://mmhradio.co.uk/andrei-zing-of-4th-civilization-is-interviewed-by-mmh-at-the-home-of-metal-symposium/

Black Sabbath Fans

https://mmhradio.co.uk/home-of-metal-fan-insurgence-band-talks-to-mmh/

Paul Long Interview

https://mmhradio.co.uk/mmh-interview-with-paul-long-dj-jon-watkiss-and-dj-mitz/

Asya Draganova Interview

https://mmhradio.co.uk/mmh-interview-with-asya-draganova/

Tom Cardwell (Battle Jackets Creator) Interview

https://mmhradio.co.uk/mmh-interview-with-tom-cardwell-at-the-bcu/

Niall W R Scott – Metal Music Studies

https://mmhradio.co.uk/mmh-interview-witch-niall-w-r-scott-at-the-bcu/

arch RIFFS Special Edition Now Available

A special edition of RIFFS has been published.

This edition was commissioned in response to the Home of Metal Symposium ‘Music Heritage, People and Place’ which took place at BCU on 13th September 2019. Speakers and attendees were invited to make creative contributions in response to the themes of the event. Under the guidance of Dave Kane of RIFFS, the special edition was put together one day, following an established DIY ‘zine methodology.

You can download a PDF of the edition or read a digital version online.

An image of an interactive exhibition at Rockheim, Norway’s museum of popular music, from the Keynote presentation by Synnøve Engevik

arch Check Global: Phase VI awarded funding!

I’m very happy to share the news that our Check project (ongoing since 2014) has been recently awarded funding by the Swedish International Development Agency for another 36 months!

Check Global will provide world-class tools and training resources to an international network of independent media organisations, journalism schools and human rights researchers in the developing world. With a focus on collaboration, we will create open source tools and open licensed online and offline training to support emerging practices in digital media literacy skills, fact-checking, disinformation monitoring and verification of digital media. This program builds on six years of impactful programming that has seen the Check team build a world-class network of international partners, and an award-winning open source platform addressing the increasingly high-profile challenge of credibility in digital media.

The current award expands the MENA-based network (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Palestine) to include:

– East Africa (Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania)

– Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Costa Rica and Venezuela)

– Southeast Asia (Philippines)

Building on the solid foundations laid since 2014, the Check program is designed around 5 key areas of focus:

• Technology – Improved open-access tools and technical infrastructure for independent actors in all areas of focus to curate, check, verify and debunk claims and media shared online, and to produce alternative content that helps countering mis- and disinformation.
• Network – Improved collaboration and stronger networks between independent media, journalism programs, activists, archivists and human rights defenders working on open source investigation, fact checking and debunking, and digital media literacy efforts in all countries of focus.
• Training – Improved capacity of journalism students, citizen journalists, civil society and activist networks and human rights documentation enthusiasts to verify content, conduct investigations and produce viable online content to counter the rise of propaganda and mis-information in their countries.
• Research – Improved understanding of the relation between open-source tech development, digital media literacy and social impact, as well as the global misinformation ecosystem on ways in which citizens’ public opinion is formed (M&E).
• Data – Improved datasets around online source and content credibility, and digital literacy skill sets in all countries of focus for research and product development.

Here are the outputs we’re working on producing in the

– Check Global Partner Network: At least 20 new independent media collectives, CSOs and journalism schools will be using our project’s tools and training resources over the next 3 years.

– Check training partners in Syria (Syrian Archive), in Yemen (Yemen Archive), in Zimbabwe (ZimFact & CITE), in the Philippines (VERA Fact), and in Latin America (Chicas Poderosas).

– CheckCon II and III – Building on the first CheckCon Conference in Beirut in 2017, these two international conferences will gather partners and the wider Check community in Years 2 & 3.

– MENA Investigative Fund: https://arabcitizenmedia.org/mena-investigative-fund/ Over 30 recipients will be awarded funding to develop investigative stories and reports (short and long form, print & audiovisual).

– Check Global Training Series Over 1500 beneficiaries will be trained in open source investigation, verification and misinformation monitoring and digital literacy skills over the next 3 years.

– Arab Citizen Media: https://arabcitizenmedia.org/courses/ 3 open-licensed online courses will be made publicly available in Arabic & English.

– Pop-Up Newsroom: From the Check Lebanese University Newsroom to a Check Pan-Arab Newsroom https://arabcitizenmedia.org/newsroom/ We will expand our work with the Lebanese University to set-up a Pan-Arab student newsroom, with young journalism students from 5 Arab universities, and will train them in issues related to media literacy, new media, investigation and social change. We will host a Digital Media Literacy Camp which will bring together over 50 students and reporters from across the MENA region.

– Research: M&E frameworks and open-access resources for public use within academic and non-academic circles; Presentation of findings and project impact at 5 international conferences and academic gatherings in the next three years; 2 scholarly articles to be published in academic journals building on the experience working on and assessing the Check Global project; 3 research papers produced in partnership with research partner Oxford Internet Institute; a Check Global Impact Case Study as part of UoA 34 REF 2021 submissions.

Dr Dima Saber

arch What We Talk About When We Talk About Jazz

On 21 June, Sarah Raine and I coordinated a writing workshop at the 2019 Jazz Promotion Network Conference in Glasgow.

Participants generated some experimental writing of their own through this exercise in response to a short performance by a quartet of young Glaswegian artists. At the end of the workshop, everyone was invited to read their pieces aloud and there was a very productive discussion about how we speak and write about jazz.

arch Riffs: Ideas of Noise

Volume 3 Number 1 2019

This issue of Riffs emerged out of a partnership with Ideas of Noise festival in Birmingham and a writing event that Sarah Raine, Craig Hamilton and I organised with the festival in August 2018: Writing with Noise. Some of the contributions were born at this event, others were inspired by the call that followed. The issue brings together music writers and academics, artists and musicians from the UK, Germany, Poland and New Zealand. Here’s a sample from my editorial:

“Writing with noise starts with a message, dialogue, some advice, observations about how to get things done, a lists of items we can’t forget, a program of sorts, pens, camera, paper, running order, catering booked, participant list, looking for the venue, seating set out for thirty people, some of them on couches already, waiting, a welcome and…off we go. Listen carefully to what she says. Writing with noise is an art, useful for getting along with others, for keeping on the move when you can’t think of where to go, of travelling light and trying things out and on. Low-fi dreaming. Over 1 minute, repeated eight times, we find a rhythm of scrawling that fits with what we want to say and how. And how? This is the challenge; always, with this exercise, anyway. Stop start. Stop. Start. Hands tired, out of ink, stupid pen, stop. Start. Running out and over with images of sounds, trying to get at what the clear lines coming out of her instrument felt like, what we heard. It’s hard to settle on adjectives; much easier with verbs. So many quickly alight on the page: sounding, tracking, scurrying, sloping, slipping, slouching, and so on. Face to face with another person, your partner in crime for this exercise anyway, brings new connections, search for a common tongue, a quick relay between vowels and groans and laughter. Then we drift apart. All too soon and it’s over.”

arch Talking Vaudeville in Graz, Austria

On 6 November 2018, I presented a talk on vaudeville songwriting at the Research Round Table, University of Music and the Performing Arts in Graz, Austria.

My paper explored some of the standard songwriting practices that emerged on the vaudeville stage in the United States in the period 1870-1929 and the theories that were developed by musicians to explain them.

The discussion afterwards focused on issues of copyright, recording, challenges for songwriters working now, and changes in the music industry over the last century.

arch Being Thelonious: Perspectives on Thelonious Monk at 100

The Birmingham Conservatoire and Birmingham School of Media are hosting a free half-day symposium entitled Being Thelonious: Perspectives on Thelonious Monk at 100on Thursday 15 June 2017.

The keynote address will be given by Professor Robin D. G. Kelley, Department of History, UCLA, whose Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original(Free Press 2009) is the first full-length, complete biography of the pianist.

Professor Kelley’s work explores the history of social movements in the U.S., the African Diaspora, and Africa; black intellectuals; music; visual culture; contemporary urban studies; historiography and historical theory; poverty studies and ethnography; colonialism/imperialism; organized labor; constructions of race; Surrealism, Marxism, nationalism, among other things, and his publications include Race Rebels(Free Press, 1996), Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America(Beacon, 1998), and Freedom Dreams (Beacon, 2003).

There will also be presentations from New York guitarist and Monk expert Steve Cardenas, Hans Koller, Pedro Cravinho, and Sid Peacock.

You can register here.