Your Chance To Perform – A Chance To Help Jazz Musicians And Promoters

On the 2nd April I wrote to the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport. My letter is printed below. “Dear Mr Whittingdale Re: The Culture White Paper I read the Culture White Paper and I have a number of comments that I trust you will find helpful. Perhaps it might help to explain…

The Autumn Culture  Preview in  the New Review  in the Observer on the 1st September 2019 was disappointingly narrow in its outlook. The highlights were heavily skewed towards London and limited in the coverage of different genres of music. There were 11 mentions generally, on film, television and books with 12 mentions of art, theatre,…

Arts Council England funding of National Portfolio Organisations (NPO) for jazz 2014/2022 Set below in Table 1 is the funding of the National Portfolio Organisations for 2014 to 2022.  Please note only those organisations are included whose activity is a give or a take a percent, 100% jazz activity. They are the core jazz National…

A commendable initiative from Guildford Jazz Calling All Jazz Clubs – an invitation from Guildford to a Virtual Roundtable on how to attract a younger audience and secure Arts Council funding Guildford Jazz has just successfully completed a series of Arts Council England funded gigs and improvisation workshops aimed at attracting a younger audience to…

On Wednesday 13th March 2024 I presented a paper to the All Party Parlimentary Opera Group on  at Portcullis House, House of Commons. Thie paper was not about the Arts Councils decision to move ENO to the North of England but about the most effective response to the Arts Councils latest document Lets’ Create: Opera…

The Arts Council published a policy for the support of jazz in 1996 and then 4 years later it was dropped in favour – as I recall – of “the bigger picture”. Needless to say no real resources had been allocated to the policy. In Paragraph 62 the Arts Council say clearly that they will…