Leadership, Mentoring, Art and Music…

Last week, I attended the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s ArtWorks launch, which is focused on “Leading Through Practice: Artist-led Leadership in Participatory Settings.” It was an amazing day (see the liveblog at amplified11.com/ArtWorksPHF ) and certain themes emerged, particularly as they relate to support structures for artists. The themes of sustainability and cross-disciplinary learning/practice came up […]

In search of ideologically sound rock music

(by Jennifer Moore) A 7-year-old of my acquaintance is soon to receive the exciting present of an MP3 player, and I have been co-opted to the organisation of this great event. I feel sure it would be a much more satisfactory present if it arrived with some music already on. He loves rock music, so I’m […]

Greenbelt: Actively Doing Nothing.

August Bank Holiday Weekend IS Greenbelt. Sometimes it feels like the banks are closed in honour of it. For 19 of the last 21 last-weekend-in-Augusts I’ve spent my time in a field (til ‘99) or racecourse (the fest has been in Cheltenham for 11 years) engaged in four simple pleasures: soaking up great music encountering […]

Have You Ever Been Funded?

Today I’m in Edinburgh with Amplified, at the ‘Talent Development Symposium’, co-sponsored by Festivals Edinburgh and The Arts Council. The Amp stuff will be posted at http://www.amplified10.com/tds10/, and there’s already a post I’ve put up there with a series of questions that face The Arts Sector. So one thing I thought it’d be good to […]

CC-Style Music Licenses For Small Businesses?

Much has been made of this article in the New York Times about the work of the BMI in enforcing the law that any business in the US playing music (radio, CDs, spotify, live etc.) needs to pay a public performance license, the cost of which is based on the size of the business. There’s […]

Adding A Soundtrack To Your Blog

One of the wonders of the ‘tearable web’ (cf. David Jennings book, Net Blogs and Rock n Roll) is that we can put our music and video up in sharable, widgetized formats that allow them to become elements in any site that wants to help us spread the word. So, for you bloggers, here’s a […]

Digital Economy Bill – My Relevant Posts In One Handy List

I had an email from an MP earlier today, asking for some background info on my position on the Digital Economy Bill. So I sent him this list of links (it’s far from complete, but the poor guy’s got a lot on, so 50-odd links weren’t going to help!): http://www.stevelawson.net/2010/01/quick-thoughts-on-obscurity/ http://www.stevelawson.net/2010/02/warners-mistakes/ http://www.stevelawson.net/2010/01/dear-rock-stars/ (particularly the bit […]

RATM Christmas Follow-up: Was It A Fix?

I’ve started mentally drafting this a few times, but almost all of them just ended up with me reiterating everything I said in my ‘Futility Of Fighting Fire With Fire‘ post over on stevelawson.net. However, this evening, someone linked on Twitter to This blog post claiming that it was a campaign masterminded by Sony. And […]