A couple in North London have committed their future to helping you find the music you love, on the web.
In the back bedroom of a detached house in Muswell Hill, in the shadow of Alexandra Palace, a small international miracle has been taking place.
It is being wrought by a married couple, David and Alison Karlin, and is already changing the way classical music lovers get their fixes, and it could change the way we book all our entertainment.
Bachtrack is what they have created, a listing website but so much more than that.
Bachtrack will find a concert by your favourite composer, ballet or opera of your choice anywhere in the UK, and the United States, and moving into Europe.
The site will also find you CDs and help you buy them as well as book tickets for venues in the UK.
But dig deeper and you find reviews by young people, snippets of music as tasters of concerts and recordings before you decide, and archive information on subjects of interest, such as biographies of composers. It is unique, and probably could not be copied, so intricate is its bespoke design.
It all started a little more than two years ago when, weary of corporate life, David Karlin left Sage where had had been head of research and development “to take a break and think for what I could do next” - 25 years ago he had built the first home business computer for Clive Sinclair.
He and Alison, a City stockbroker before she married and had children, discussed projects they could do together, and they came up with something that could make commercial sense as well.
David had been surrounded by music in his childhood home, drifted to jazz in his teen years and to folk at university, where he became a competent guitarist. His chief musical love now is opera. As a mum, Alison found that there was little live music for kids who were not good enough or inclined to be in the school orchestra, and among other things started a “kitchen band” for their two children’s primary school pals. Together, the Karlins had experienced the frustration of trying to book music on line, and realised that here was their joint venture.
A&B Awards show leadership of arts and commerce together.
The arts are showing the rest of the country the way out of recession, said Colin Tweedy, chief executive of Arts & Business, and the non-subsidy support of arts is ensuring they stay on course.
Speaking at the 31st annual A&B Awards at the V&A, Tweedy said the winners “show the astounding variety of imaginative partnerships possible between culture and commerce.
“If there has been a knock to the reputation of business during this recession, the arts are proving a perfect way for them to reconnect with their communities. Business has no obligation to support the arts” he said. “That they continue to do so is a force for good for all our collective futures.”
He said that In 2004 A&B had set themselves three years to change. “We relaunched with our young professionals programme; our master classes which have been sold out; Culture House for private givers; and the Prince of Wales Medal for philanthropy in the arts” he said. There was also, he said, a new online art gallery, and A&B were now working on a blue print for private giving for after the election.
The prestigious Goodman Award for an outstanding voluntary contribution was won by Lady Solti, the widow of conductor Sir George Solti, particularly for her work with young people through Sadler’s Wells theatre. Accepting her trophy – a miniature wooden temple made by Afghanistani craftsmen sponsored by the Turquoise Mountain Foundation based in Kabul, as all the awards this year were - Lady Solti said: “I want to share this with all fellow volunteers who are so important to the arts – now more than ever. It’s all about sharing, all about achieving accessibility together”.
Earlier, A&B’s chair Baroness Helena Kennedy had announced that she was standing down with immediate effect, a year in to her second three year term. She is being replaced interim by Steve Williams of Unilever and the post is to be advertised.
Other winners of awards were:
JTI A&B Community Award – Liberty Stadium and Pippin’s Designs
Pippin Designs, a charity that works with disabled, special needs and vulnerable children, has partnered with Liberty Stadiums on a community art project to fill the empty Liberty football stadium with art created by the children
Prudential A&B People Development Award – Translink Metro & Belfast Actors
Belfast Actors developed an unusual way to improve the services for Translink Metro through a training scheme where actors posed as customers. This engagement gave drivers the confidence and tools to deal with real life situations and resulted in the highest customer satisfaction on record and increased passenger numbers.
A&B Young People Award – Ernst & Young and South London Gallery
Ernst & Young and the South London Gallery came together to give young people from local schools the chance to put together their own exhibition. The highly successful Double Take programme took learning out of the textbook and made it real for over 4,000 students.
British Council A&B International Award – Takeda Pharmaceutical & London Symphony Orchestra
Pharmaceuticals giant Takeda has taken the London Symphony Orchestra to audiences throughout the world through a staggering 192 sponsored concerts so far. The “Musicians on Call” initiative takes music to the housebound or those in hospitals across the world, promoting the important relationship between music and health. Takeda’s continued support enables LSO to perform artistically demanding programmes across the world.
A&B Cultural Branding Award – Deloitte & Royal Opera House
Ignite, an annual contemporary arts festival broke new ground for both partners, building on their reputation for excellence. The judges felt the partnership was a stand-out example of cultural branding – revolutionary for both brands, as well as engaging staff and clients and bringing a new community together.
BP A&B Sustained Partnership Award – UBS and Circus Space
Circus Space was a derelict power station but with sustained support from UBS has been transformed into an internationally recognised arts powerhouse.
Prudential A&B Board Member of the Year Award – Ferry van Dijk and Hoxton Hall
Ferry Van Dijk is a manager for new business development at Shell. Ferry, who was previously a mentor for teenagers and involved in leading student and political youth bodies, was a perfect match for Hoxton Hall by bringing his business acumen to the arts today.
Lloyd’s A&B Innovation Prize – Edding Pens and Monorex
Monorex arts collective supports new talent on the London arts scene through their Secret Wars live art event. Monorex approached Edding (pens) UK to arm their warring artists with the necessary ink.
Women in the arts are being pushed to the fore in a new scheme being promoted by ACE’s Cultural Leadership Programme.
The CLP is appealing for nominations for a new “Women to Watch” list of female leaders in the arts in an attempt to enhance recognition of the achievement and potneital of emerging women in the sector.
“We firmly believe that an important part of the drive to tackle under-representation is to recognise and celebrate good practice and, crucially, to support and encourage emerging and mid-career women leaders in the sector” said Hilary Carty, director of the CLP. “By launching this list we are hoping to engage a variety of senior leaders in supporting the advancement of talented women across our industries.”
The list will be launched in March to coincide with International Women’s Day, with submissions being judged by a panel chaired by Jenni Murray, presenter of BBC Radio’s Woman’s House.
The panel are looking for submissions from the realms of advertising, archives, crafts, design, libraries, literature, museums, music, performing and visual arts, the historic environment and other creative businesses. They should be for women in the positions of artistic director, chief executive, managing director, chair or organisational lead.
“There are nowhere near enough women in positions of power and influence, whether it be in the cultural and creative industries or other sectors” Ms Murray said. “We need to do everything we can to enable and encourage the next generation.”
The arts have traditionally been more encouraging to talented women, and currently a number of key posts are held by females. Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund both have female chairs, and the latter’s chief executive is also a woman. The London Symphony Orchestra’s managing director is a woman, as is the Southbank’s artistic director and the Minister for Culture.
However, CLP believes that despite culture being worth £56.5 billion and 8% of the overall UK economy, there is a lack of investment in leadership in the creative and cultural sector and in particular there are significantly fewer women in positions of leadership than men.
ACE chair Dame Liz Forgan has called for the arm’s length principle of funding for the arts to be upheld in the face of a deepening row over the appointment of a new chair for Arts Council London.
Speaking at a Theatre Management Association conference last week, she said the principle had kept the arts independent for more than 60 years.
“It keeps the arts free of political interference in the content and nature of creative expression” she said. “It protects politicians from being held accountable for the occasionally outrageous, offensive or otherwise troublesome work of artists.
“It is looked at jealously by artists in some countries that do not have these arrangements…(and) is seen as an emblem of good practice all over the world.”
Her remarks are being seen as a thinly veiled reference to the controversy over the appointment of Lady Sue Hollick’s successor as chairman of London’s regional arts council.
She had been embroiled in a row involving the Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, refusing to accept a nomination for the chair of the London Arts Council by London Mayor Boris Johnson. She had been co-opted onto a shot listing panel which included the mayor’s noisome, Veronica Wadley, but who Dame Liz said in a leaked letter to Bradshaw was not as well qualified as other candidates, and the panel left her off the shortlist. Wadley was nevertheless put forward on Johnson’s insistence and appointed after a Greater London Assembly interview, but the appointment was not accepted by Bradshaw who accused the mayor of political interference, which Johnson has refuted.
She has now named Ajay Choudhry, artistic director of Rented Space Theatre and CEO of the digital media company Enqii. It is not a political issue, she said, but a matter of good management of the arts.
Venues in Burnley have been put under pressure not to stage a controversial new play about the town, claims director Max Stafford Clark.
Stafford-Clark’s company, Out of Joint, are currently touring their production of Mixed Up North, set in a youth theatre group in Burnley in a number of venues throughout the North West of England and in London.
But dates in Burnley itself were cancelled after pressure was applied by senior figures in the council, he says.
“We were lined up to do Burnley Mechanics Institute, Burnley Youth Theatre and a local school, but for a variety of reasons, none of the dates went ahead,“ says Stafford Clark, who co-wrote the play with Robin Soans, to examine the aftermath of racial tensions in the town which boiled up in riots in 2001. But he added that Burnley youth theatre admitted that they had been under pressure from the council not to go ahead because the play “presented the town in a bad light”.
Stafford Clark said that an e-mail from Burnley to colleagues in Bolton council, where the play was presented at the Octagon theatre, also complained of Bolton’s decision to allow the play to be shown there.
If the play had gone ahead and people didn’t like it, fair enough,” said the former Royal Court director. “But to try and ensure that it doesn’t get shown in Burnley is a disturbing example of censorship. There is a sense in some official quarters that they would rather some issues were swept under the carpet.”
Based on real testimony from young people and social workers in a multi-racial theatre group set up to improve community relations, the play deals with continuing tensions between different racial groups, sexual violence and the town’s attempts to bury its past.
A future Tory government could merge English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund and demand cuts in the distribution costs of grant giving bodies like the Arts Council.
Speaking at a meeting to discuss the future of heritage, shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt promised that museums and art galleries currently classed as Non-Departmental Public Bodies will be reclassified so they have greater independence from government.
Accusing the Labour government of neglecting the heritage sector, Hunt said that, with 14 ministers responsible for heritage in 12 years, it had been “impossible to get any consistency in policy making”
He promised that under the Tories, major cultural institutions would be freed from Treasury rules. A new Conservative government would introduce a Museums and Heritage Bill to establish a new administrative status for non-departmental public bodies within the cultural and heritage sectors. The new status would allow them “to be truly effective and entrepreneurial fundraising bodies” able to raise money for capital projects and for endowments on the US model. A new administration would also explore long-term funding agreements, possibly stretching beyond 3 years, in return for a solid commitment to build up endowments and alternative income sources.
But the shadow culture secretary added that during tough economic times, “we need to ask whether English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund should exist as separate grant-giving entities. The arts and sports world manage with one, and by HLF’s own figures combining their functions with EH would save £7 million.”
Hunt also said that “administration costs of 9% at HLF and 8% at the Arts Council “are still too high”, adding “we believe that lottery distributors should have distribution costs no more than 5%.” This could generate an extra £30 to £40 million of lottery funds for the heritage sector from 2012 on.
He also repeated the Tory pledge to restore the Lottery to its original four good causes and to introduce tax changes to boost philanthropy.
Up to a quarter of jobs at Scottish arts Council and Scottish Screen could be lost in the merger to form Creative Scotland next year.
The new business plan for the merged body reveals that it will have 33 fewer full-time posts than the current level of 146 full-time positions within the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen combined. Traditional departments will disappear and managers will hotdesk at locations across Scotland. Headquarters will be in Edinburgh but the agency will retain offices in Glasgow too.
Scottish arts chiefs say all job losses will be voluntary and £1 million has been earmarked for payoffs. Current funding arrangements for grants will remain at least for the first six months following Creative Scotland’s start-up. But implementation director Richard Smith warned, “Creative Scotland will be an organisation that has to be prepared to make some tough decisions, not to take the easy line. It will not be a comfy pair of slippers.”
Latest figures suggest that the government’s drive to create more cultural opportunities for young people is working - at least for older children.
A survey for the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) shows that 45% of 5-15 year olds are participating in five hours of cultural activity a week. The findings from the survey Taking Part: The National Survey of Culture, Leisure and Sport reveal that 66% of 11-15 year olds had more than five hours of cultural activities in and out of school, while the figure for . of 5-10 year olds was 26%.
Paul Collard, chief executive of Creativity, Culture & Education (CCE), which delivers the government’s pilot cultural offer Find Your Talent, says: ““Access to cultural opportunity is too important to be an accident of geography or the privilege of a minority and we are already exploring various ways to overcome the challenges of in enabling all children to access culture.”
News focus
Twelve arts schemes have been chosen from the Artists Taking The Lead competition as the four arts councils’ main contribution to the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, led by Arts Council England, London
The 12 works of art that will mark the 2012 Olympics have been chosen. “They will lift your spirits” said the Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell. “Many of them will also make you smile.”
The winning commissions sharing £5.4m have been selected from 2,000 applications, and many from notable artists have failed. “They were just not good enough” said one of the selectors. “What we have is invention, delight, surprise and great quality”.
The nine English regions will each receive £500,000, Northern Ireland £190,000, Scotland £460,000 and Wales £230,000, contributed by all four arts councils.
EAST
On Languard Point, the Pacitti Theatre Company. Whole communities are being involved with 205 black flags being flown around the coast, gradually replaced by the flags of participating nations; there will be street feasts and a whole cul-de-sac of houses will be painted black and become a theatrical arena; disused shops will house exhibitions of ephemera, and the talents of composer Michael Nyman and choreographer Wayne McGregor as well as radical theatre director Robert Pacitti are being harnessed.
EAST MIDLANDS
Lionheart, Shauna Richardson. Three 30-foot high crocheted lions, inspired by Richard the Lionheart who was associated with the region, will dominate the Nottingham skyline. Richardson wants to highlight crochet as a contemporary arts medium.
LONDON
Bus-Tops, Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu. Forty bus shelters across all the London boroughs will have LED panels fitted to their roofs on which Londoners will be able to send messages, play games and make statements, exploiting the ct-creativity of a new audience for art – those who travel on the top decks of double-decker buses.
NORTH EAST
Flow, the Owl Project and Ed Carter. An environmentally friendly watermill will float on the Tyne with the artwork generating its own power and monitoring the river’s environment. Musical instruments will play, activated by the data, and audiences will be invited to interact.
NORTH WEST
Project Column, Anthony McCall and FACT. Produced by Liverpool’s Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Anthony McCall’s column of spinning loud will rise from Birkenhead’s disused Morpeth Dock, visible 10 metres away, which will disappear and reappear in structures sequences.
NORTHERN IRELAND
The Nest, Brian Irvine and John McIlduff (as Dumbworld). The people of the Northern Ireland will be asked to donate an item each to be fashioned into a gigantic work of art by artists and designs, and then to become the official point for large-=scale musical event.
SCOTLAND
Forest Pitch, Craig Coulthard. Trees in a secluded part of a forest near Edinburgh will be cleared and a football pitch created for one match only, played by two teams of amateurs. The trees will form the goalposts sand the spectator stand, and after the game the area will be left to return to nature.
SOUTH EAST
The Boat Project, Lone Twin (Greg Whelan and Gary Winters). People in the south east will be asked to contribute a wooden object of personal significance to be use in building a sea-going boat, which will be launched in May 2012 on a two week voyage. The boat will then be the centre of four arts events, performance, visual, test-based and sonic.
SOUTH WEST
Nowhereisland, Alex Hartley. An island the size of a football pitch found by the artist in the Arctic will be brought to the south west through international waters, will be given “micronation” status, and will navigate the coast visiting ports and harbours accompanied by a travelling embassy. There are already 359 signed up citizens.
WALES
Adain Avion, Marc Rees. An abandoned DC9 aeroplane fashioned into a wingless bird will “nest” around the principality, pulled to each site by teams of local athletes and community members.
WEST MIDLANDS
Godiva Awakes, Imagineer Productions. Lady Godiva’s ride will be re-enacted as a progress from Coventry to London by a 10 metre high puppet, made form aluminium and carbon fibre, and symbolising equality, fair play and justice.
YORKSHIRE
Leeds Canvas, Leeds Canvas. This is a collaboration of artists and arts organisations in Leeds that will use the buildings, streets and people of the city as a “canvas”, with the assistance of the Quay Brothers as artistic directors. Opera North, Northern Ballet, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Phoenix Dance, Yorkshire Dance, Leeds Met Gallery, Situation Leeds, Leeds Art Gallery are all working with Leeds City Council.
The government has just launched a scheme for apprenticeships in the cultural industries to allow non-graduate routes into the sector. Pauline Tambling, managing director of the National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural Skills (NSA) explains why this is a breakthrough moment
Widening access to the arts for young people and developing new audiences remain two key issues for the sector, and ones that I’ve been committed to addressing throughout my career.
But despite numerous initiatives, as a sector we have never managed to come up with an answer to two questions. What can we say to an enthusiastic young person, who has benefited from an arts education programme and wants to work in the sector, but doesn’t want to go to university? And how can we ensure that the people who work in our cultural organisations reflect the wide diversity of our society?
One reason for this is that there are very few non-graduate entry routes into the cultural sector.
The NSA (a wholly owned subsidiary of Creative & Cultural Industries plc) has secured funding from the Learning & Skills Council (LSC) to put this right. Through the development of an apprenticeship training service we are, for the first time, able to create a structured means of bringing non-graduates into our sector.
This will complement existing recruitment practices, not replace them. Importantly, it will mean that young people, who for one reason or another are not destined for higher education, can find jobs in the cultural sector, and access high quality training as they work, and get a qualification.
Over the next three years we aim to introduce 1,125 apprenticeship opportunities. Any approved apprenticeship pathways that are relevant to the sector will be on offer. Currently there are six recognized pathways in the creative apprenticeship, including live events and promotion, music business, technical theatre, costume and wardrobe, cultural heritage venue operations and community arts, and these will remain.
Now for the first time there will also be less arts-specific pathways in business and administration, finance, marketing and communication, customer service and IT.
One of the challenges in developing this programme is that traditional government funded apprenticeships don’t always fit the needs of the cultural sector. They tend to reflect old ways of taking on apprentices, in sectors like construction, hairdressing, plumbing and carpentry where there’s a predictable number of places every year. As a result funders, like the LSC, tend to work with further education colleges that have yearly contracts with employers and take a fixed number of young people.
This won’t work in our sector. Finding annual apprenticeship opportunities across 70,000 small businesses working in the subsidised, commercial and not-for-profit parts of the advertising, craft, cultural heritage, design, literature, music, performing and visual arts, which align directly with the relevant colleges offering day release courses, isn’t easy for colleges and funders but will be part of what we’ll do.
The National Skills Academy will work with employers in the creative and cultural sectors to identify apprenticeship opportunities on an ongoing basis. Apprenticeships can be shared, if appropriate, across two or three employers. We’ll match employers with one of our 19 NSA founder colleges around the country who will provide flexible training opportunities and organise training funding for each learner with the LSC.
Employers will be required to pay their apprentice the national minimum wage. There’s been some resistance in the sector to paying unqualified young people when there are so many graduates willing to work for free as interns, but as one employer recently said, “We spend around £8000 on advertising in the national press for an administrator, take on a highly qualified graduate and lose them to a better opportunity three months later when we actually want someone from the local community who stay with us for a few years”.
The apprenticeship training service within the NSA will sort out job descriptions, training partners, payroll and qualifications for employers to minimise their workload.
As a result of the programme, we are confident that we will see some of the talented young people becoming employees and the diversity of our local communities better reflected in our staff. We are also confident that we’ll create some really strong relationships with our network of further education colleges throughout England. With equivalent pilot projects starting to happen in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, the approach is set to spread across national borders.
As many people know, our sector is among the fastest growing in the UK economy. To keep pace with this growth we need to be taking steps to ensure that a diverse range of young people can access new job opportunities as they emerge. Apprenticeships will help us do this.
