We have a great team of Research Assistants working with us on the BLMP project. They have been helping us with a number of tasks around data collection, organisation and analysis. One of those assistants, Godrick Tshiteba, recently wrote a blog post about his experiences with the project. The full text is below.
The Sound of Birmingham
Birmingham, a city we love and adore has seen to become extremely impactful in terms of the reputation that the UK holds, especially around the music industry. History has seen the city contribute through some of the pioneers of heavy metal, Black Sabbath all the way through to the popular artist Ozzy Osbourne, MIST and many more. The acts represent a large reason why live music became popular throughout the UK and particularly in Birmingham with special venues capturing the imagination of people within Birmingham and internationally such as the NEC Arena and then one of the oldest and most historic theatre venues, The Hippodrome. The O2 Arena has contributed significantly to the point that live music can do so much for not only the community on an minute scale locally, but also the global impact that live performance has.
The city is very well known for the different attractions that can be found throughout. You can explore the wonderfully lit-up Birmingham New Street building to the Cadbury World. There are a number of amazing ways in which you can make the most out of your time here. Our focus will be the representation and perspective of the impacts that Brexit and globalisation, in general, have on the Live Music industry. The scale of the project and depth of research needed required a number of different team members. Dr Patryja Rozbicka, Dr Adam Behr and Craig Hamilton have worked together in order to conjure up a team that can help further add to the live music experience of Birmingham not only for tourists but for the locals as well. But also help us generate and present data to discuss the various ways in which communities are impacted on a smaller scale and how this may even impact the UK nationally.
In order to help familiarise yourself with some of the work previously done, you can visit this link to gain a wonderful insight into what you can become a part of.
Our focus is primarily based on the Live Music Industry from the perspective of Birmingham and this is something that caters and affects everyone within, regardless of where your interest lies. We are compiling data and research together as part of a large project to further express some of the impacts that global, national and local changes have on the live music industry from the perspective of Birmingham. March 27th, 2020 was meant to be a time to see a compilation of some of the work that has been put together by us so far. Unfortunately due to the spread of Covid-19, we have had to postpone the event, eventually, we aim to host an event in which we can do this but for the time being, we are respecting regulations.
What’s next? Well, we’re going to adapt to our situation and maintain a relationship with the wonderful network we’ve created with all our stakeholders. Hopefully, we can keep our workshop date of September 18th, whilst also being able to organise a workshop for later in November. In the meantime, seeing as we are all working together to participate in social distancing we’re looking into ways in which we can create an online survey/questionnaire, allowing you guys to be able to grant us feedback and share your perspective of live music experience and what you’d like to see in the future.
We want to have a great influence on the UK as a whole, not only concerning Birmingham. The data collected from around the community is going to be used in order to help provide a small lens for others to be able to look and see the impact that music and culture have on us. We hope to always stay in contact with you and keep everyone up to date, we appreciate the positivity and hope to improve the live music experience for people coming from all walks of life. Help us and become a part of something special.
