Many thanks to Jon Bounds for recording and then uploading the video.
Category Archives: AHRC KTF
Un-Convention Salford 2009

Nick Webber, Jez Collins, Andrew Dubber, talk music as culture at Un-Convention Salford
We recently attended Un-Convention Salford 2009. Organised by AHRC KTF partner Fat Northener, Un-convention is a not for profit grassroots led music conference for DIY and Independent music makers and companies. Born in 2008 as an alternative to Manchester’s mainstream In The City event, it has already inspired Un-Conventions in Belfast and Swansea and future events in Glasgow, London, Barcelona and Reykjavík. This year’s UK national event in Salford featured a range of key musicians, bands and industry personnel.
Martin Atkins: “Momentum is King!”
On a warm Sunday in late May, Martin Atkins brought his “Tour:Smart” presentation to the Hare and Hounds in King Heath. For those who missed our earlier blog post, Atkins is a musical entrepreneur with a packed C.V. that includes; drummer/producer/author/label-owner/presenter/lecturer/publisher/filmmaker – and self confessed “crap” DJ…
We Should Talk More
Back at the beginning of May, I attended two events which were interesting not only for their content, but also for the group of people that they brought together. The first of these was an Arts and Humanities Research Council workshop entitled Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Practice. The purpose of this was to showcase some of the interesting work that the AHRC has been funding in the area of Knowledge Transfer, one of our favourite subjects, and to attract more people to the scheme. It was hosted by the School of Education at the University of Birmingham, and featured talks by academics from UoB, De Montfort University, the University of Exeter and Interactive Cultures, and by representatives of the AHRC. Paul Long, our presenter, was accompanied by some of our lovely partners: Jez Collins, of Birmingham Music Archive and Ruth Daniel, of Fat Northerner. I also sat next to him and nodded encouragingly in the afternoon sessions.
A year in the Treehouse

Over the past year I have been working within the Interactive Cultures team as a junior web developer, providing online support for a number of knowledge transfer projects alongside Jon Hickman. I’m now leaving the team to go travelling in Australia. Continue reading
Tour:Smart DIY Summit
We are finalists in the National Impact Awards
Last week was a week of achievements. Along with Sam Coley, Andrew Dubber and Paul Long I have been short-listed for the Impact Awards, which “celebrate the success of collaborative working and the process of transferring knowledge and expertise beyond higher education and public sector research establishments for the wider benefit of society and economy.” Our work as AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellows has been chosen as one of the five finalists for the Business Impact Award, for our partnerships with 27 radio and music organisations. Evidently there were 73 entries overall, so it’s quite an achievement to get this far.
Cultural Mapping – guest post from Jon Bounds
Myself and Jon Bounds are working on creating a map of musical activity in Birmingham. As part of the AHRC KTF, Interactive Cultures sent us to the Cultural Mappings; Cities, Landscapes and Memory Symposium. Jon has provided the following report for us from the event:
From Rwanda with Love
As part of our KTF activities with development charity CARE International, Birmingham City University has been asked to assist with a series of audio slideshows promoting a visit to Rwanda by “007” film composer David Arnold.
Talkin’ all that jazz (and creative industries)
We’ve been busy this last week, travelling up to Leeds in order to present at two conferences.
The first was ‘The Word on Jazz’, the latest annual event held at the Leeds College of Music (it began in 1993). Andrew Dubber presented work coming out of his research with Tim Wall on jazz online as part of the now completed BBC project. Tim Wall and I were able to elaborate on the work that we have been doing on popular music histories on TV. Tim spoke about Ken Burns’ PBS series ‘Jazz’ while I spoke on the BBC’s ‘Jazz Britannia’ series. We’ll be developing these themes in further conferences and in at least two scheduled publications so watch for details. Suffice to say, our collective BCU panel was warmly received and generated some interesting observations and comments. Such instances serve to add to the rigour of how the work finally looks when (if) published.