[Week 3] Not quite Music Future (s) Yard – yet…

This week saw my first event as a newly minted Music Futures PhD student – the Pop3 Exhibition at Future Yard in Birkenhead. Future Yard opened during the COVID pandemic and has grown to become a central community asset since its launch. Offering what appears to be cradle-to-grave approach to cultural participation, you get the feeling whether you are a parent attending Raver Tots with your little party people of the future or making good use of the accessible facilities as an aged member of the musical community, the venue has got you covered.

Poster for Pop3 @ Future Yard

 It turns out that Pop3 was a wonderful first front-line foray into the cultural community of the city. Organised and hosted by Sustainability Manager James Gillaspy, the programme featured a broad range of topics and guests that really helped to pull apart innovation within the sector from a variety of interesting perspectives. First up was Luke Wallace, a Canadian songwriter and activist whose keynote set the tone the for the day. Admittedly I was suspicious as to how the trademark enthusiasm and optimism of North Americans (a quality I admire deeply) might translate to a drizzle-soaked British audience on a Thursday morning in the northwest, and even more so when the hybrid talk/performance encouraged the room to engage with a bit of participatory singing. This is usually about the time I want the conference floor to open up into a huge sinkhole to swallow us all up, but Luke kept everyone onside with relentless sincerity and ruthless authenticity. This was someone who has been on the front lines of the protests as much as he has stages, and for me his talk represented the broader line up – experts, specialists, professionals – all compassionate human beings wanting to work together for the greater good.

Luke’s keynote was followed by a panel on energy featuring Laura Sedgewick of Theatre Green Book and Antony Woloweic of Ecotricity Business – some interesting perspectives on where innovation is happening and where challenges still exist, but mostly a reassurance that things are going in the right direction with regards to the sectors continued move away from fossil fuels and the ongoing issues on multiple fronts when trying to encourage transitional behaviours where both frying pan and fires are commercially volatile. That’s not to mention the squeeze created by the technicalities of installing or upgrading feeder pillars and the capricious mesh of District Network Operators (DNO) who stalk the middle-management layer of energy distribution - their hegemony safely hidden behind a web of customer facing suppliers.

Roundtable session at Pop3

Back to the more traditional theme of climate-catastrophising there was a fantastically impactful presentation from the National Oceanography Centre which featured visualisations of the damaging effects from real world modelling of oceanic trends and ongoing sea level / storm surge rises on Liverpool. Having studied Marine Biology in a former life I discovered much comfort in observing the scientific method articulated in the form of various parts of Liverpool photoshopped underwater. I immediately thought of how the data from their modelling might be paired with the existing Liverpool City Region Music Map – if we could unite the modelling of sea level / storm surge rises with geographic data of cultural spaces we might be able to explore potential economic impacts at scale. I approached the team with this idea during the round table session later in the afternoon and I am pleased to say they were very excited and keen to explore further; we have scheduled a meeting with Music Futures Co-Director Dr Matt Flynn for January.

The afternoon sessions started with a venues workshop with Earthsonic and it was great to meet Louis Jamieson from Music Declares Emergency properly. I was especially excited to meet Hannah Overton, the newly appointed Head of Recordings for Warp Europe who shared some brilliant insights into sustainable vinyl production as well as the upcoming Hope Over Fear campaign with whom I am hoping we will be able to combine efforts. I lost a little professionalism at this point, with Warp soundtracking most of my later teenage years and most of my twenties it was difficult to resist the urge to fanboy directly into Hannah’s face about my deep love for her roster and my keenness for new material from Squarepusher.

With the afternoon in full swing, and the standard post-lunch lethargy creeping across the room it was time for the Liverpool John Moores University team to hit the stage. Hyper-aware that my new supervisorial team haven’t seen me address a room previously I dialled back the usual presenter energy to around a 5/6, which was still pretty enthusiastic for most people’s standards, but we managed to re-energise  the room for a round of scintillating discussions and response mapping that allowed me to start getting into analysis for the first time. As mentioned previously in this account, I have learned that limitations with sustainable events standards often appear in the form of both best practice and within the shared challenges event organisers face. This was the basis for the questions we used for the roundtable discussions, which was co-designed by myself and the LJMU team where I also built a micro-site for delegates to access an online survey should they not wish to share perspectives in the room.

Music Futures LJMU team L-R: Andrew Lansley, Prof Rachel McLean, Dr Sarah Haynes

The questions asked were:

1. Are there any initiatives or interventions your business/organisation is undertaking to address climate change? If so, could you share some further information or links?

2. What are the main barriers you face in your work around sustainability?

3. What good practice have you observed (either in Liverpool or further afield) that you think would be good to explore further within the city?

The phrasing was also developed to consider and capture the existing efforts within the sector, acknowledging the ongoing efforts of the sector in how they are approaching environmental stewardship as academia tries to establish the best entry point for effective and progressive engagement. A quick question to the room provided the cold waters of reality when asked “who has heard of Music Futures?” and not a single hand was raised. The ability to influence a system is at least partially defined by the scale or profile one enjoys within it, where leadership can be defined as “influence – nothing more, nothing less” or at least as John C. Maxwell would have us believe. Taking a Systems thinking approach to engaging with the regional music community as a first step feels like an appropriate (and low risk) way of establishing relationships and starting to engage with the various communities working towards a shared sustainable future. The content and feedback from each the roundtables seemed to support the idea that there is much good going on in the city, but collective endeavour is met by shared challenges across the wider region.

A thematic analysis of the challenges discussed by stakeholders at the Pop3 event can be found below:

Pop 3 - Thematic Analysis - Findings.pdf

Download PDF • 90KB

I left my first Music Futures event feeling confident that I am in the right place at the right time. In just one day I met some truly wonderful people and organisations not just from both the local area but from national music and sustainability scenes, and it is encouraging to see just how much investment there is from across the live, recorded and broadcast sectors in the future of the city. For now I feel these events can help me to find both my place as a Music Futures academic, but also where I can act as an advocate for the community to help influence our cluster’s work more effectively as we grow our efforts in the region.

So it looks to be an initial year spent auditing, mapping and convening the regional musical and environmental apparatus. There are many ways we could measure this, but the one thing I’ll be looking for in 2026 will be at least a smattering of hands raised when we ask the delegates at the next Pop3 “Who has heard of Music Futures?”