August Bank Holiday Weekend IS Greenbel

• soaking up great music
• encountering some life changing thinking
• playing as many gigs as I can possibly find over the weekend.
• hanging out with the most inspiring people I’ve ever met.

The proportion of my Greenbelt time spent on each of those three things has changed over the years – in 1990, I went to 63 different gigs over the weekend (and thanks to the commensurate lack of sleep, dozed off at the wheel of the car before I’d even got off the campsite, leaving my mum to tackle the 300 mile drive home).

Then I gravitated towards the talks - as my view of the world expanded into my 20s, so my appetite for the challenging, inspiring, heady mix of politics, theology and justice issues shook me from whatever complacency the other 361 days of the year tried so hard to force upon me.

Having played at the festival with a range of artists in the 90s, the turn of the millennium brought with it an insane schedule of shows that seemed to increase year on year – Greenbelt was the place where I launched my first album (10 years ago this week), where the Recycle Collective first played a show, where many amazing and fun collaborations have been birthed and found a home. I think my record was 13 performances in a weekend…!

But this year – our first year festivalling with the baby, we have no gigs and have largely ignored the program (despite downloading the iPhone app to see what we’re missing) – so the question was ‘can you go to Greenbelt, do nothing, and still have that Greenbelt experience?’

The answer is – of course - ‘of course’. Greenbelt has always been about people. Whether those people are on a stage, or sat on the grass, in a band, writers, thinkers, politicians, vicars, believers, doubters, old, young… none of it matters. Greenbelt is a place where people mingle and mix, sharing ideas, lives and a constitution-rattling amount of caffeine (and organic beer) in the pursuit of the possible. We collectively breathe a sigh of relief that the Daily Mailification of the world has yet to breech Greenbelt’s fiercely guarded space to be excited and optimistic about the future while taking seriously the challenges that face anyone who chooses not to be complacent in the face of injustice.

So Lobelia, Baby Flapjack and I have wandered around, guided by serendipity into a never-ending series of life-affirming conversations with amazing people. It’s impossible to leave this place feeling like the world is screwed – there’s just way too much here to get excited about. To much, passion, hope and wisdom emanating from a field in Gloucestershire that has the potential to change everything. Again.

Right, time for coffee…

It seems that one of the many obstructions to the balanced discussion about resourcing talent development is the semantic gulf between the

The role of narrative in providing context for art (as distinct from any narrative – or lack thereof within the art itself) can be a crucial link between the progressive practice of the artist and the need for some kind of measurable, perceivable output for the resource body.

In his book ‘The Sacredness Of Questioning Everything’, writer and thinker David Dark talks about ‘the space of the talkaboutable’, and that concept – of spaces where active, progressive exploration of the language around a subject is encouraged as a way of deepening understanding and relationships – may provide great narrative media as well as a place where the project, the participants, stake holders and the culture that the art exists within or responds to are connected and allowed to enrich one another.

Social media can provide fantastic low-friction ‘spaces of the talkaboutable’ – where democratised space (like twitter) or curated space (like a blog or forum) can be used to throw ideas, descriptors and concepts around as well as sharing ‘small media’ introductions to whatever work may be emergent.

Have a listen to the following Audioboo where Xander and I explore some of the themes that have come up across the weekend:

So one thing I thought it’d be good to chat about is funding, and experiences with funding thus far. So, as the title says, have you ever been funded?

• Ever had money from the Arts Council, the PRS, any other grant body, in order to do your art?
• Ever been on a grant funded tour?
• What was your experience?
• Ever felt like you missed out on funding due to a lack of communication about where it was available?
• Ever been helped out by the Musicians Union in finding funding?

Would be great to hear your experiences, the good the bad and the ugly, and how things could’ve been done better…

Over to you, arty types:

Much has been made of

There’s much in the article that has been attacked - the suggestion that they take money from struggling businesses, the idea that their ‘enforcers’ are referred to as ‘sales people’, and of course, the much bigger problem that very little of what gets played ever gets paid for thanks to the reporting process using ‘sample data’ – from local TV and radio – to decide what’s likely to have been played.

The situation is similar in the UK, with the PRS collecting from venues as well as keeping data on radio plays based on the sample day idea (though I know that with the PRS, at least in some cases, it’s possible to call them, tell them where and when your music was played, and get paid even if it didn’t land on a sample day…)

I ended up on the list of artists that got paid after my tour opening for Level 42 round the UK. I got paid a LOT of money for playing my own music, and then got a series of top-up payments (which were either money that was missed from the tour, or based on the assumption that tours like that rarely happen in isolation so I was probably missing out on money elsewhere… which I was, however uncomfortable I am with the ’success breeds success’ approach to allocating where the extra cash goes)

So, I have two suggestions that it’d be interesting to have batted around on here:

Idea a) There are numerous ways to report exact playlists these days – last.fm being the most obvious. Why aren’t businesses allowed to use such a service (an extra-verified last.fm account, especially for the business, that draws metadata from an approved source, for example) to report exactly what they play, so that the actual writers of those songs get paid.

And b) why not have an opt-out and a ‘free to use in cafes’ Creative Commons-style license that requires the licensee to display a list of the music that is currently being played along with contact details for the artist. The terms could be defined by business size or type (not valid for any establishment charging entry, or using a DJ, for example), so only for places that have background music, but it would mean that those artists who are currently not getting paid even when they do get played can opt out and instead of their non-existent pay-outs, can have some exposure. I know that a number of times in my life I’ve heard background music in cafes and bars that I REALLY wanted to buy, under this license, the music would’ve been displayed, and Sting wouldn’t be getting paid for the privilege. Their playlists could be public via the last.fm option in Idea A too, or they could even pull the music from a specific web-based central pool (would work well if something like Spotify was available in the country where the venue operated, but only if Spotify had a more open submission process for music…)

It would mean that bars that thrive on playing top 40 music could still do so, and play the license that means those people get paid, but bars that play jazz, blues, folk, indie etc. who still have to pay but who are understandably pissed off that the royalties they pay DON’T go to the artists they are playing, they get to do something INSTEAD of paying a meaningless license, something that is pro-music. It would encourage small, struggling businesses by removing a burdensome license fee that may otherwise mean they don’t play *any* music (which clearly none of us want).

Question 1 – Any further suggestions? Any modifications needed to make it work?

Question 2 – would you as an artist sign up for such a scheme? What terms would you want added to the license?

Thinking caps *ON*:

One of the wonders of the ‘tearable web’

So, for you bloggers, here’s a suggestion - add a Bandcamp album embed or Soundcloud widget to each post. Assuming that your blog readers are predominantly desktop readers, it’s a great way for people to discover new music while reading about a wholly unrelated subject. the player is pretty lightweight in terms of load-time, and any time soon they’ll be adding an HTML5 embed so that it’ll work on iPhone/iPad as well…

For bandcamp, all you need to do is go to the bandcamp page for any album or track, click ‘share’ and grab the embed code for your kind of blog.

You could even, if you have one album you really love, add it (via a different shaped embed – all tweakable after you’ve clicked the share button on bandcamp) to the side bar on your blog for your readers to listen to each time they come – a theme tune, if you will

It’s a great way to add interest to your blog, and become a positive link in the chain of discovery that forms this marvellous brave new world of online music.

like this:

[and if you want a list of albums that are available like this from people in some way connected with this blog, check out the bandcamp directory post and of course my own music page at http://music.stevelawson.net]

Mick Grierson is Co-Director of the Masters in Fine Art – Computational Studio Arts, BSE program in Creative Computing at Goldsmiths College in London

Goldsmiths are an ideal early partner in the Centre For Creative Collaboration as they’re already fairly focussed on interdisciplinary work, and as you’ll hear Mick explain as you listen to the Audioboo, they are already working on projects with some of the other colleges within the University Of London and with UCL

Mick highlights the need for collaborative work, given the focus on delivering measurable output for the public funding that the department is receiving, which often just doesn’t happen without collaboration.

Also, computing of the kind that Mick and his department do lends itself to modular work – where different teams can share the load and do what they’re great at.

The limitations of funding are what makes a project like the Centre For Creative Collaboration so vital in the current climate – as Mick says, the relationship between tiny-but-deeply-significant ideas and observable outcomes that the funding bodies need to see to be able to measure the value are often found when people have time and space to throw ideas around, to experiment, collaborate and see what’s possible.

The neutrality of the Centre For Creative Collaboration makes it an ideal place for that kind of idea-development to happen. The range of interested parties will allow for cross-disciplinary involvement in a way that may rarely happen if left to the departments within the various colleges to organise.

Have a listen to the whole conversation with Mick for more of his thoughts on this.

If you’ve been to Tuttle over the last few months, you’ll at least know where the Centre for Creative Collaboration (C4CC) is

The idea is that it’s a ’safe’ space for collaboration, firstly between the different colleges within the University Of London – UL covers a huge range of subjects, most of those are siloed even within the colleges, let alone across the various colleges that geographically cover a BIG area of London. Like so many other big academic institutions, collaboration is often an after-thought, in a world where the race for funding, accreditation and dominance in a specialist field drive evermore-focussed specialisation, with little room at the margins for the serendipitous goodness that happens when, say, a musician and an architect meet up to swap ideas. Or a physics undergrad gets to talk to an environmental scientist about the application of their work in eachother’s fields.

It does happen, but it’s pretty rare and the terms are often loaded.

So what happens when you create a neutral space for such things, one that’s well resourced and has a dedicated team making things happen there? Well, that’s what the project will find out.

And today, in the collaborative spirit that drives the entire project, we’re going to assemble a website in a day. And by ‘assemble’, I don’t just mean ‘install and design’, I mean concept, content, everything.

‘We’ in this instance is a collaboration between C4CC and Amplified – so the web monkeys that are doing the back end and design stuff are Ben Walker and Xander Cansell, the co-ordinator is Brian Condon (who straddles both worlds, running C4CC and being a core Amplified person too), Laura Kidd, Debbie Davies (co-opted in from the amazing pool of creative collaborators that gather at the C4CC for Tuttle on a Friday morning) and me, with the incredible Lucy Windmill making it all actually happen, as is always the case with Amp stuff.

So, follow the #C4CC hashtag today on twitter, or each of the participants, and before too long, we’ll post the URL and you can hopefully see it all happening before your eyes. The content will start diffuse, existing in each of our own web environments, but Twitter is the place to look for the links…

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 about Bono claiming Hollywood is screwed on the same day that Avatar became the first movie to gross a billion dollars)
http://www.stevelawson.net/2009/12/transformative-vs-incremental-change/
http://www.stevelawson.net/2009/04/art-first-why-the-present-of-music-is-the-best-its-ever-been-for-musicians/

and the one I sent last night,
http://www.stevelawson.net/2009/09/independent-music-manifesto/

oh, and the point in this one about spending on Entertainment Media being WAY up, is vital…
http://www.stevelawson.net/2009/11/online-music-balancing-the-scales-of-free/

Enjoy – please do share the link around to this page, or to whichever of the individual posts resonates best with you.

As far as I’m aware, my MP Jim Dowd wasn’t there. I don’t know why – he may have  a really good (professional or personal) reason for not attending. But I’ve written to him again asking him to turn up tomorrow to the 3rd reading and oppose it.

Here’s the email -

Hi Jim,

were you in the Digital Economy Bill debate today? I didn’t see you on the live feed (which I watched for about 6 hours), but I wasn’t actually writing down names.

If you weren’t, and didn’t have a water-tight excuse, I’m sorely disappointed that you chose to forgo the chance to be a part of what is a vital piece of legislation, and one that desperately needs more consideration. Your colleagues Tom Watson, Eric Joyce, Fiona McTaggart and Austin Mitchell, as well as John Redwood, put fantastic cases in favour of scrapping the bill in its present form. They demonstrated a remarkable knowledge of both the technical and cultural workings of the internet, as well as a really strong grasp of the relationship between legislation and behaviour online, and also the blatant fabrication of the BPI/DCMS figures on ‘lost revenue’ to ‘illegal file sharing’.

I’m disappointed that you weren’t there to lend your voice, to represent those of us who rely heavily on the internet for our businesses, and for whom large parts of the digital economy bill have very negative consequences.

Please assure me you’re going to show up for the 3rd reading and make sure this ill-thought out piece of lobby-driven nonsense won’t get rushed through before the General Election.

cheers,

Steve Lawson

Hi Jim,

just a quick note ahead of tomorrow’s debate to express again my fear that highly contentious and misunderstood elements of the Digital Economy Bill will get pushed through in the wash-up. I was most grateful to receive your message that you don’t think the majorly contested parts of the bill will get pushed through in the wash-up, but I’m seeing a lot of reports elsewhere that suggest that that is still a possibility.

I honestly can’t stress enough just how much a much wider discussion is needed, for everyone to fully understand the specific and unhelpful vested interests at work in the parts of the bill that were drawn up by the BPI, and the consequences- foreseen and unforeseen – for those of us who work in the digital sector. To not pursue the discussion/consultation to the point where those making the decision were more fully versed in the culture it impacts and the consquences of their decision would be deeply undemocratic, and would certainly impact on my decision about which way to vote at the next election.

As a natural and life-long socialist, I really want to feel at home in the Labour party. Many things have caused me to feel increasingly disenfranchised from the party I grew up rooting for in opposition, the party whose transition to government in ‘97 I saw as a huge victory for ordinary people, poor people, the people who’d been crapped on by the tories for so many years. Since then, the transition of the Labour party from the party of the people, the party of workers, of the masses, to being a party open to the kind of insane lobbying that the BPI are responsible for in this instance has depressed me greatly and – along with my gross objection to the Illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq – has lead to me looking for a political home elsewhere, but finding none.

I’d love to see the Labour party move away from its recent big business bed-hopping, and become once again the democratic voice of the people it claims to represent.

The Digital Britain report contained a whole load of wonderful suggestions re: digital inclusion, digital education and the use if internet-based communication technologies to re-enfranchise parts of the population that have been increasingly distanced from much of mainstream civic life. Most if not all of the digital inclusion aims will be damaged and perhaps rendered impossible by the various effects of the Digital Economy Bill, all in order to protect an industry that was never a support to Britain’s artists and musicians, and has utterly failed to capitalise on the massive benefits and advantages brought about by the very technologies this bill seeks to strangulate.

…Not to mention the parts of it that will cost millions to implement before the Government and ISPs discover that hackers and clever internet people will be able to work around it anyway, losing all the vital and useful currently available metadata that we have via the public search sites that track metadata relating to music shared and played online.

Thanks for reading,

Steve Lawson