It’s International Jazz Day and UK members of CHIME are at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

On Friday, George McKay hosted a day-long symposium on ‘Researching (Jazz) Festivals’ that included talks from leading scholars in festivals research and jazz festival directors from Cheltenham, London and Manchester festivals. Italian scholar and archivist Francesco Martinelli and CHIME’s Tony Whyton delivered keynote presentations on European jazz research and the day concluded with the launch of Emma Webster and George McKay’s ‘The Impact of Festivals’, an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded literature review that charts and critically examines existing writings on the impact of British festivals.
J-Hive
In addition to the symposium, Nick Gebhardt has been working with a team of media researchers from Birmingham City University to develop a digital heritage tool called J-Hive. J-Hive is being piloted in Cheltenham for the first time and runs from 28-30th April. The project aims to document the experiences of different audiences at the Festival.
In putting the project together, a mobile application has been designed to allow different audiences (concert goers, musicians, promoters etc.) to send text and images to a web page where they regularly respond to, and reflect on, the music, the festival atmosphere, and the people they meet.
Through the interface, participants can follow their own posts as well as those of others participating in the project. Ultimately, J-Hive will create a collection of different festival encounters and memories that will offer insights into the festival experience, how festivals are navigated and understood, and the relationship of music to the places and spaces of the town.
Happy International Jazz Day!
About thirty J-Hive users have posted about 118 comments and images on their festival experience. Looking forward to seeing what they’ve been saying and hearing and seeing.
Thanks for posting this, Tony. I thought we had a great day at the Discussing (Jazz) Festivals symposium at Cheltenham, and if folk are interested in a copy of The Impact of British Music Festivals report we launched at the end of the day, do get in touch: george.mckay@uea.ac.uk
The report will be available open access online shortly too, of course.