Press Release The All Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group urge Arts Council England to reinstate National Lottery Projects Grants When Arts Council England announced its £160 million emergency rescue package to deal with the coronavirus crisis in March 2020, arts organisations and individuals alike were rightly delighted by such a swift and positive response. However, […]
Timothy Garton Ash in his article “Britain dwells on its past, but has no vision for its future” (The Guardian, 22nd May 2020), sets out where we are now but fights shy of a vision of where we want to be. Asking Keir Starmer to propose a future will undoubtedly provide some useful policies but […]
“The world looks to British theatre. So let’s get it back on track…” So ran the headline in the Observer on Sunday 24th May 2020. It was an article by Oliver Dowden, Secretary of State for Digital Culture Media and Sport. ( https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/may/24/the-world-looks-to-british-theatre-so-lets-get-it-back-on-track ) The article presented the new task force and working groups which […]
The Arts Council has announced a rescue package but has suspended national lottery grants that would help jazz musicians and jazz promoters organise tours and plan ahead – to organise a tour or project you have to plan over a year ahead. The suspension of the national lottery grants will now add to the misery.The Arts […]
The leader article ( Amid the pandemic music send a message about things eternal, Monday 23rd March 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/22/the-guardian-view-on-music-and-pandemics-the-global-prisoners-chorus) on culture and music completely missed the point which is the meltdown of music; especially among underrepresented music such as jazz, blues and folk. The available research shows that jazz musicians had 45% of their incomes coming from […]
I was bemused to read in the article “Time for Change” that Arts Council England gives 16% of its music funding to jazz. My last calculation in “Public Investment in Jazz 2012-2022” (see https://www.chrishodgkins.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Public-investment-in-jazz-2012-to-2022.pdf) showed that of the total funding of music for Regularly Funded Organisations was £359 million of which jazz accounted for £6.9million or 1.9%.For the […]
There was an article by Sarah Marsh in the Guardian on Monday 29th July 2019 that rising numbers of younger fans spark a UK jazz renaissance and streaming sites report growth in young listeners and festivals are signing up more jazz acts. However there are two caveats. Streaming as a marketing tool allows jazz musicians […]
March 26, 2019 – 11:41 PM
There was an an article in The Observer by Mark Lawson “How will our museums survive if they subject every donor to to an ethical audit?” (24th March 2019) that drew attention to the ethical angst, dichotomy and perhaps hypocritical nature of arts patronage amongst established institutions. The industrialist Sir Henry Tate was the early benefactor […]
March 26, 2019 – 11:38 PM
I read the article promoting Schloss Elmau by Harriet Green in the Observer on Sunday 17th March 2019. A raft of musicians were mentioned and regrettably jazz was sidelined by the fact that the author admitted to having a “deaf ear to jazz” – what ever that means – and the jazz musicians calling themselves […]