Marc Reck

So aside from our Project X Presents Event, which is made up of all different types of Birmingham artists (with a few international ones too),  i’m also involved with another event in collaboration with Mr Elephant and The Night Times, which is made up of, and aims to make some collective noise about 25 Birmingham underground events  and their residents, and celebrate Birmingham’s underground scene with a big warehouse and beach party on Saturday 20th Sep 2008.

The night will be programmed so that in each of the three rooms there will always be something different playing, and the flow of music will be diverse yet still work well as a whole. In the age of people liking more than one genre of music, to have many styles in one room, and that set over 3 rooms should make the whole night a lot more interesting for the audience, (and hopefully expand that promoters fan base by introduce new audiences to their music.)

Obviously one event is still only going to be one event, no matter how many other events are involved, so aside from features in the Night Times publication about the promoters involved, there will also be regular Night Times Presents events to carry the idea forward, and we’re all also trying to think imaginatively about how this can have actual benefits for everyone involved.

Money, (without headliners and big door prices) in the underground events world is unfortunatly never going to be one of them, however the benefits to the respective networks, and maybe even the city, exist on a lot of other levels and have good potential. We are hoping its possible for the venue, to enable us to host it as a free party, as the costs without any fees are around £2500, and no-one is in a position to cover this. However venues obviously have a lot of their own costs, and while they are destined to make a lot of money on the bar, its not as straightforward as you’d imagine.

Often, it seems that that the underground scene, its venues, and respective promoters often gets missed out of the discussion about why Birmingham is not on the map, which in this city confuses me, as at least from my eyes, the more underground events and venues, have bought a range of different music, experiences and culture to me over the last 15 years. I’ve read a few times, that part of the solution could be more clustering, but with the financial and time constraints of promoting, there are often difficulties of making this happen in reality.

A few ideas that have come up from chatting to some people recently are that promoters could share flyering runs, postering runs, and mailing lists. This would have to be done selectively, and imaginatively for the very reasons that this is not happening, but ultimately could mutually benefit.

Networks could be shared in some way, so that the massive costs of organising and promoting an event could be negotiated to be beneficial for all. Having a central promoter calender so as similar events don’t not clash, and opening more like minded venues that can work with promoters could also open more opportunities have been suggested by friends who have lived in places like bristol and manchester as one of the differences between brum and other cities.

These ideas are obviously around in some respects, and often self organise in some almagamation with the existing models available, but i do wonder if there isn’t some way that we can take the massive financial and time costs out of the equation by collectively working in a beneficial way.

Some promoters, venues,  djs, vjs, artists, etc, and publications like the Night Times in particular, are active in this respect for the underground scene, and online coverage by venues, social sites like DSI, Facebook, and brum based sites like Live brum and Created in Birmingham, all offer ways to reach new audiences.

However after spending so much time on events this week, before we’ve even started the mass promotion push, and neglecting all the other things i really need to be working on, i wonder if there aren’t more ways that we can find, to make it feasible for people to put on events in this city?