25 Years of London Jazz Festival book published

In the dialogic spirit of cross-pollination, I thought I would share with the CHIME project the key output of another jazz festival-related project I have been working on recently. The Impact of Festivals (2015-16) was a 12-month Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project at the University of East Anglia in collaboration with the EFG London Jazz Festival. With postdoctoral research assistant Dr Emma Webster, we researched the history of the London Jazz Festival and the wider story of London as a city of jazz festivals. Emma was also Researcher-in-Residence at the 2016 festival.

Our history of the festival is now published;  it contains archival research, interviews with musicians and festival workers, around 100 images including posters and programme covers, and a preface by founding director John Cumming.

Music From Out There, In Here: 25 Years of the London Jazz Festival is FREE to read and download by clicking here: 25 Years of London Jazz Festival.

From the cover blurb:

Webster and McKay have pieced together a fascinating jigsaw puzzle of archival material, interviews, and stories from musicians, festival staff and fans alike. Including many evocative images, the book weaves together the story of the festival with the history of its home city, London, touching on broader social topics such as gender, race, politics, and the search for the meaning of jazz. They also trace the forgotten history of London as a vibrant city of jazz festivals going as far back as the 1940s.

We have a small number of FREE paperback copies available for suitable libraries, cultural organisations, festivals, researchers. If you would like one, get in touch with me, george.mckay@uea.ac.uk.


We hope you enjoy our new book; do let us know. This is what other people think. In his foreword John Cumming writes:

The meticulous work … in this history charts the festival journey across decades, and probes the bigger picture that surrounds it…. The outcome is I think an immensely valuable piece of work that informs our practice as a producer of live music, and at the same time marks the essential role of academic research in evaluating the impact of the cultural sector in a wider context

Jazz Journals Bruce Lindsay (November 2017) reviewed Music From Out There, in Here thus:

A new, freely downloadable book on the history of the London Jazz Festival mixes insights, controversies and plenty of photographic evidence…. McKay and his co-author Emma Webster have produced an eminently readable book, its 100 or so pages filled with excellent photographs, amusing and fascinating tales and intriguing insights into the genesis, growth and popularity of this major jazz festival…. The book takes a positive look at the festival, but doesn’t shy away from discussing issues of concern, for example around funding and programme repetition.

Ian Paterson’s review in All About Jazz (December 2017) includes this:

This illuminating history is the result of a year’s digging by researchers and co-authors Dr. Emma Webster and Professor George McKay, and represents the final outcome in the Impact of Festivals project funded by—take a deep breath—the AHRC’s Connected Communities programme, which included studies on the socio-economic impacts of British music festivals and more specifically of jazz festivals. The authors’ linear narrative of the LJF—jam packed with colour photographs—captures the sense of a great adventure unfolding, a romance, if you like, between the festival and its host city. Placing London and the LJF within the wider context of jazz in Britain, the authors point out that whilst London was late to the party in terms of establishing a jazz festival that reflected the city’s global status, there has been a fairly constant history of jazz festivals in or around London since the Festival of Jazz in 1949.

Note: a large-print version of Music From Out There, In Here: 25 Years of the London Jazz Festival is available here.

From Glyndebourne to Glastonbury, festivals report now online

Impact Festivals coverThis new report about the impact of British music festivals, launched at CHIME partner Cheltenham Jazz Festival in April 2016, is now available online. We hope festival researchers and organisers will find it of use and interest. This is what some people are saying about it already:

  • “This report is an irrefutable qualification of the value and impact of our sector and an amazing resource for anyone involved in the organisation of a music festival.” Steve Mead, Artistic Director, Manchester Jazz Festival 
  • “Within festivals we need and value the criticality of academic research. A report like this helps us shape, make sense, rethink what we are doing.” John Cumming OBE, Director, EFG London Jazz Festival
  • “This report is excellent—a pleasure to read, and I will be recommending it to my students and colleagues.” Professor Stephanie Pitts, Head of the Department of Music, University of Sheffield

The report was produced as part of The Impact of Festivals, a 12-month project funded under the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Connected Communities Programme, working with research partner organisation the EFG London Jazz Festival. Professor George McKay is the Principal Investigator for the project, as well as AHRC Leadership Fellow for Connected Communities at the University of East Anglia. Dr Emma Webster is the Research Associate for the project, and co-founder and director of Live Music Exchange.

The findings are drawn from an extensive literature review of existing work in the field, from academic research to ‘grey’ policy literature, economic impact assessments to festival and industry publications. Not only that, but there is a 170-entry annotated bibliography  of these outputs accessible here. We think that, taken together, the report and the annotated bibliography will be an important reference point for industry and academia alike in the future.

The report is is freely accessible here. If you would like a paper copy please contact Rachel Daniel, r.daniel@uea.ac.uk. Do let us know what you think of it!

CHIME at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival

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

Matt Brennan; Stephanie Pitts, Alison Eales and Nick Gebhardt talk about collaboration and live audiences.
Matt Brennan, Stephanie Pitts, Alison Eales & Nick Gebhardt talk about festival collaborations & audience research.

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.

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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!

Links to reports and resources about the impact of festivals

Library Jazz Event noticeI thought some people interested in CHIME would like to know of a very useful page on the website of a related new Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project from the University of East Anglia, The Impact of Festivals. The post-doctoral researcher on The Impact of Festivals is Dr Emma Webster, who spent much of November acting as researcher-in-residence at the EFG London Jazz Festival, and contributed to the CHIME inception event there in November.

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