FAC Insights: Three Key learnings from ‘I Know A Place’ with Antonia Lines (Come Play With Me)
FAC Insights is a forum for us to showcase and share long form pieces looking at various parts of the music industry and the society that shapes it. Pieces take the form of videos, interviews, discussions, articles and more.
This month we hear from Antonia Lines, of non-profit music development organisation and FAC stategic partner, Come Play With Me. CPWM’s mission is to fight for an equitable, inclusive and diverse music industry. They specialise in supporting people from marginalised communities to access a career they love in music, by providing tailored career development for individuals through events, workshops, record label and magazine.
“One of the key dates in our calendar is ‘I Know A Place’, an annual networking and conference event which champions diversity in the music industry and takes place every January in Leeds.
This year we focused on collaboration, learning and networking. It’s important for us to create spaces where people can connect, learn and share with one another in a safe and supportive environment. Collaboration is at the core of what we do at CPWM.
We are as keen to learn from others as we are to share our own knowledge, so this year's conference was a chance for us to introduce the work our partners do to our audience, and give our audience the opportunity to talk to the people that can help and support them too.
Our three key learnings from the day:
The live music sector needs help...
From our Leeds base we are lucky to be able to work with venues such as The Brudenell Social Club, Hyde Park Book Club, Oporto and Belgrave Music Hall regularly, but the live music sector is in crisis. We’ve partnered with Music Venues Trust, who reported recently that almost 40% of Grassroots Music Venues were operating at a financial loss last year and an average of two of them close every week.
We brought them along to run a panel on the reality of live music today and what everyone can do to support the campaign for grassroots music venues. Led by Beverley Whitrick (MVT COO) the panel discussed what audiences, musicians, promoters, engineers and venue owners can do to support grassroots music and each other, actions included:
Buy advance tickets for grassroots music venues and local promoter shows - take a chance on bands you might not have heard of yet!
Be realistic about your finances, ensuring everyone gets paid is key to creating a sustainable economy for everyone involved.
Make the space safe. Think about how an audience will experience your venue, make it as inclusive and accessible as possible.
Support the MVT campaigns for ticket levys from large venues and follow their work
Marginalised musicians need more support…
This year's conference audience was bigger than ever and included many musicians at various career stages. 60% of our audience are from working-class backgrounds and say they don’t know where to find support or connection to the industry.
We had over 100 submissions for our ‘listening party’ panel, where a panel of experts listened to demo submissions from artists across West Yorkshire. This really highlights the lack of support and ways into the industry for emerging artists. It’s especially difficult for those from marginalised backgrounds - LGBTQ+ people, People of Colour and disabled people, who are still vastly under-represented in music and make up the vast majority of our audience.
We’ve been working with the Musicians Union and Help Musicians to support their campaigns for a fairer industry for marginalised musicians and do more research into the specific issues and barriers for LGBTQ+ musicians. We supported them to publish their latest ‘LGBTQ+ Musicians Insight Report’ which found that 90% of LGBTQ+ musicians reported low mental wellbeing and had experienced discrimination throughout their careers.
You can read the report and the recommendations from it, and follow the Musicians’ Union online.
Solidarity and building community is important…
In Strike! The Power of Unions, Chardine Taylor Stone and Amardeep Singh Dhillon talked about the importance of the union movement for musicians, hospitality workers and freelancers, and about how important it is to organise with others. Their insight and experience helped our audience start a promoter support group, which has already seen people collaborating and working together in the city to foster better relationships between venues, promoters and artists.
We spoke to Corrine Bailey Rae about the importance of being true to yourself as an artist and how empowering it is to create music with people that build you up and champion you. This is something super important to us as a small organisation working with emerging artists. Collaborative working and building networks are absolutely fundamental to our work, for us it’s about making sure we are always co-creating and working in lasting partnership with people who share our values.
Working with other organisations and individuals in our direct community is really important, and for this edition of I Know A Place, we worked with our friends at Made With Music, who do amazing work in and around Leeds to support deaf and disabled musicians and audiences, as well as The Brudenell Social Club, and local promoters Girls Can Play Guitar, Your Name Here.
We’re also really keen to continue our work at a national level with people like the Musicians Union, Music Venues Trust, FAC, BPI, Ivors Academy and EMI North, to continue pushing for a more inclusive and accessible music industry. We’re really proud of the work we do. If you’re interested in working with us, then we’d love to hear from you!