Last week on Thursday 16th November I gained a rare opportunity, to take volunteer at the inaugural Resonate conference in Glasgow. For those of you who don’t know about Resonate, it is a new musical conference and event taking place in the Barras Art and Design Centre (BAaD). The conference itself ran from 9am to 6:30pm with a variety of panels, workshops and drop ins. I was stationed in the pizza watching over two events: Meet the Funders and Meet the Rights Organisations. But more on that later.
We arrived at BAad at 8am and gathered in the attractive main hall where the body of the conference took part. Before registration of delegates began at 9am we set up the drop in halls and stalls along with the registration area itself. Staff from the brilliant 23rd Precinct along with the volunteers set all of these up, with a good team spirit being established immediately. This was a theme which would continue all day, I’m pleased to say.
With everything set up and looking good, the delegates began to arrive and look around the venue. They were then treated to the Opening Keynote at 10am, ‘In Conversation with Ged Doherty’, a fascinating insight into the music industry from the chairman of the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) and Brit Awards. He also spoke about his more recent ventures into the film industry. SMIA (Scottish Music Industry Association)’s Tam Coyle conducted the event and was entertaining, setting a pleasant tone for the day ahead. While preparing my drop in centre for the first session at 11am I was lucky enough to get the chance to listen to Ged Doherty and was thoroughly impressed that Resonate had got such a figure to open their first ever event.
At 11am the first panel of the day started, ‘Celebrate Women in Music’, followed by ‘Joining the Dots’ at 12pm. However, by this point Meet the Funders was well underway and I was watching over the thriving event. As soon as the Opening Keynote had ended there was a flurry of movement towards the pizzeria, with all of the funders being kept busy with delegates and a small queue building, talking about how much they liked the look of BAaD and how they had enjoyed Ged Doherty. In this drop in we had Chris Tams (BPI), Jamie Houston (Creative Scotland), Ian Smith (Last Night From Glasgow), David Culbert & Liam Hennessy (Help Musicians UK) and Jen McGlone (Glow Art).
Interesting, Meet The Rights Organisation brought a slightly different vibe to the Pizzeria as we were joined by Kevin Benz (Broadcast Music Inc), Stuart Fleming (Performing Rights Society), Richie Malone (Performing Rights Limited), Duncan McCrone (Mehnical Copyright Protection Society) and Marco Giulinai (PPL). They informed and chatted with a crowd with quite a relaxed atmosphere. I had the chance to have a chat with Stuart and Kevin , both of whom were full of interesting and useful information and enjoyable to speak to. I also had the pleasure of chatting of chatting with Andrew from Chemikal Underground, who whilst not part of the panel also gave me some great insights and entertaining anecdotes.
There was then a break for lunch, provided by A’Challtain restuarant – a tasty curry with rice, chips and naan bread. I dutifully provided the sound guys with their lunch before grabbing my own and very much enjoyed it. There was some live acoustic performances during this break, as people casually strolled round the stalls in the main hall, such as the Electric Honey stall which was full of great, unique Electric Honey products related to both Glasgow Kelvin College and bands on the label such as Pronto Mama.
After lunch, Meet the Funders and Meet the Rights Organisations reconvened with a new set of interested attendees, whilst on the main stage there were panels of ‘What You Syncing?’ and ‘Are You Even Listening?’. When half past 4 rolled around I was pleased to get the chance to watch the panel, ‘Developing the Infrastructure of Scotland’s Music Industry’ featuring head of DF Concerts, Geoff Ellis. Whilst this panel was taking place news filtered through that DF had extended the 2018 TRSNMT Festival to 5 days.
After a brief announcement from Help Musicians UK there was the final event of the conference, ‘The Man, The Myth, ‘The Legendary A&R Man, Dave Ambrose’. This was genuinely brilliant, with some fantastic stories. Dave Ambrose has worked with an unbelievable amount of huge and historic bands including The Sex Pistols, Radiohead, Duran Duran (who he spoke very highly of), Queen and AC/DC. Again, Tam Coyle conducted proceeding and the audience clearly loved this talk. This was another feature of the day, anyone I spoke to enthused about how much they’d enjoyed and been impressed by the conference. Credit here again goes to 23rd Precinct for putting together such a great event.
The evening brought Resonate Live, and with it performances from Flew The Arrow, Ant Thomaz, The Nickajack Men and Declan Welsh and the Decadent West. There were some very enjoyable performances and I’ll definitely be checking out some of these acts again, particularly The Nickajack Men who I had never heard of before but was really impressed by. I had heard of Declan Welsh and the Decadent Welsh before but never seen them. They put on a strong closing set to finally bring to the day to an enjoyable end.
After such a successful first year, hopefully Resonate will be back in 2018 and will be even bigger and better!
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Mumblings And Ramblings 