Trick Creative //

Creative Futures Podcast

Here is an example of a recent piece of work contracted by Creative Futures, tracking the progress and value of a wide range of youth focussed music projects and workshops in Coventry. 

Godiva Fest ‘11

For quite a few years now the Godiva Festival has been running as the main free music festival in the city that is Coventry. This year acts included Ghost Poet, Musical Youth, Young Knives, Sandi Thom, The Selecta, Leathal Bizzle and Athlete to name just a few, so a fairly decent selection of artists and bands for all to check over three days.

The reason I was there was however not to see the bands, but to support the ‘Urban Youth Tent’, the only tent at the festival fully catering for and representing the youth of Coventry. A place where young people could pick up all sorts of useful information, chill out, and also check out some of the finest young DJs, dancers, and live PAs. Myself, Ray and Dave (music / media workers) supported a handful of seriously keen and hard working young people from the Venny youth music centre to organise and run a sound system and stage manage all the performing acts over the Saturday and Sunday of the festival.

As with any music festival, its all about team work, and this was no exception. From 8am to 8pm the crew worked hard, packing the sound system and equipment in the van, setting up, sound checking, fixing faults and mixing a variety of acts. Most importantly everyone acted as a professional live sound team and got on with what was needed with out a great deal of bother. Perhaps the only thing that could have improved the Urban Youth Tent was a later license, that and some fans (as it was an absolute scorcher!!).

I only worked the festival on the Saturday, but was Impressed with our young production team as they did a great job and made it happen. Shouts to Feisty, James, Conar, Macauly and David! 

Primeline Music trip to London

On October 30th i went down to London with a group of ten young producers, vocalists and future music entrepreneurs who all attend a youth centre / studio i work at in Coventry. It was a pretty jam packed day with the main aim being to distribute CDs and 12” vinyls to some of the coolest little indie record stores mainly in Soho. The music had been produced and pressed as part of a project called Primeline Music, a youth run record label. 

Record stores visited included Sister Ray, Sounds of the Universe (home of the Soul Jazz record label), Black Market, Phonica and the long running (and thriving!) Rough Trade. It’s so good to see independent record stores that still sell a lot of vinyl, as across the country it is increasingly difficult to find such indies due in part to them not being able to compete with online sales and downloads (…yes, and illegal music sharing). Phonica, who also run several record labels out of the store, have a couple of computers for people to browse their online catalog if its not CD or vinyl they want - thats the way to do it: give people the choice! And i might add they also had a chilled leather seating area for those who can stand flicking through any more tunes!

All in all the young people sold thirty vinyls, ten or so CDs and even had some orders to send on more - what a result! This was a great job as it takes confidence to try and sell music in such well known stores with no previous experience. All of the guys that did the selling really buzzed about this and were ready to sell more and more right up to them running out of stock :) A valuable experience for all concerned, and an eye opener to many new and unfamiliar styles of music that were being played and sold in the stores. Rough Trade particularly had things in place to keep the underground / alternative music fan happy; from a full size stage at the far end of the store for guest shows, to a coffee shop inside the entrance and even little drum machines and synthesizers for people to jam on when the music listening posts are in use… i could go on, but i will safely say Rough Trade is the kind of place you could quite easily loose many of hours of your day.

After a successful afternoon of distributing music we grabbed some Japenese food near Spitalfield Market and headed to Faringdon for the last treat… A visit to the world renowned Fabric nightclub :-)) We were shown around in a quick tour of the main room along side an explanation of their awesome ‘bodysonic’ dancefloor and line array sound system. We witnessed a fraction of the earth-shaking power it was capable of when the last 12” vinyl copy we had left got a played out - a dub step track by Amec - needless to say it sounded heavy!! A great end to what was a very tiring and inspiring day for all concerned.

Day three: Guerrilla production sessions

Moving onward to the second stage of collab productions this week, groups selected a ‘style card’ indicating the musical genre to work within along side some guidance as to sounds and musical elements that could be included to fill out the track. There were three groups working on ‘Dub Step’, ‘Dancehall’ and ‘RnB’, following on from ‘House’, ‘UK Garage’ and ‘Hip Hop’ earlier in the week. Things have stated to be mixed up a little more which is great; singers and MCs working with producers and beat makers they had not previously collaborated with… and some serious vibes going off in the studios!