Post by Traditional Music Forum on Jun 15, 2021 8:24:45 GMT
A weekly two minute catch-up for members from the
TMF Director's desk
These are some of the things that have caught my attention this week.
It's been a week of meetings. The most recent a 'round table' (we need to find another name for that array of boxes on Zoom and Teams) held by the Scottish Music Industry Association to discuss their Moving Forward document, which outlines some ideas for managing the effects of Brexit for the music industry in Scotland. Some interesting stats in the meeting. There are as many vinyl records being manufactured now as there were in the 90s, but only 5% of the pressing plants from that time survive. None of them in Scotland.
Speaking of which, Saturday 12 June is Record Store Day. Vinyl buyers are no longer conforming to the High Fidelity stereotype according to this article.
This week the TMF's TradMentor programme finished its second year. Funding permitting, we're hoping to add another two mentors to the TradMentor pool for next year. We currently have six trained mentors, and of course the more fully trained mentors we have the more opportuniities we can offer to mentees.
Congratulations to Catriona Hawksworth, Creative Scotland's new Traditional Arts Officer, who started this week.
Culture Counts has produced this handy guide to the new Scottish Cabinet and shadow spokespeople.
Our colleagues at the Scottish Storytelling Forum point out that community groups can apply for fully funded storytelling sessions or workshops delivered by a professional teller from the Scottish Storytelling Forum’s Directory SSF covers the cost and in return, applicants offer a good deed back to their local community on or before St Andrew’s Day (30th Nov), continuing the 'ripple of kindness'. Register to take part here.
This week saw the last of the European Folk Network's Spring Forward events which presented a manifesto and a strategic action plan to the network. Seems to have been a long time getting there but this marks the end of the first phase of the Network. Scotland is well represented through the TMF/TRACS, Fèisean nan Gàidheal and Fèis Rois (all founder members) and the Stoneyport Agency. You can see a full list of members from Iceland to Serbia here.
The TMF is represented on the National Library of Scotland's Scottish Discography Working Group, which has been dormant since the pandemic. One thing I learned is that there is now a Scottish Jazz Archive up and running. A Scottish Traditional Music Archive is in the TMF in-tray, but would be a massive project. In the meantime we're working in odd moments on a Scottish trad discography from 1960 to the present.
We're looking at doing a Trad Talk event, possibly next month, looking at post-Covid recovery in the trad scene. More details to come.
This week's earworm is the excellent Molly Tuttle and a gorgeous version of Neil Young's Helpless.
All the best
DF
David Francis is Director of the Traditional Music Forum