A friend of mine defuses bombs for a living. He says he quite enjoys the moment as he walks calmly in one direction, whilst everyone else is doing quite the opposite! I thought about this as I approached the mixing console...

The sound check for the end-of-year performance was over an hour behind schedule. There was a technical problem that my sound engineering students were unable to fathom or fix. Family and friends were beginning to gather outside the hall and stress levels inside were almost unbearable.

A colleague took my arm. He began to tell me about how, as a young boy, he helped his father build a dry-stone wall. He recalled fetching and carrying the different-shaped stones and passing them to his dad to arrange. He knows that he worked hard on that day but because of his limited input and responsibility, he felt detached from what had been accomplished. Some years later, he had the opportunity to repeat the task but with his own son, at his own home. This time the roles were reversed. The father carried and passed the stones to the young boy who, with encouragement and guidance, manipulated them into the positions that they still stand today. His son, now in his twenties, looks on the wall with pride, as a great achievement.

‘That’s a lovely story’, I said, ‘but how does it help?’

‘You’ve done this before’, he answered. ‘If you fix this, they will take nothing from it. Give them the bricks. The opportunity to succeed or fail.’

His argument was that failure provided just as valid a learning experience as success. This situation was vital because it couldn’t be simulated in class and they would work extra hard not to repeat it again in the future. Poor concentration and lack of planning had got them into this mess. Didn’t they deserve to feel the glare of a thousand disappointed parents, even for a short time?

As a Sound Engineer, who has experienced the lonely de-rigging of the PA after a bad gig, I took his point. But, as the college calendar had provided limited opportunities for this event to take place I decided that I couldn’t let the show be cancelled without trying to fix the problem. What these students needed, I decided later, was more opportunities to fail!

The Music Industry is renowned for being a ‘hard nut to crack’. As a Music Technology lecturer at Warrington Collegiate, I meet many young people who would love to take their place on the bottom rung of the ladder, if only they could find the ladder in the first place!

Maybe it’s this difficult career entry that has helped our music industry to remain so successful for generations. By filtering out all but the most savvy, enthusiastic and focused? Whatever the case, to these young men and women the music business seems a long way away.

As a tutor, I began to feel rather ineffectual with regards to offering valuable, real-life experience to my students. I had enough friends and contacts to arrange the occasional work experience or job shadowing but opportunities were limited. 

I decided to approach Stuart Smith, the local music development officer, and Daniel Johnson, the owner of local live music venue The WA1, to discuss putting together an organisation that would solve this problem and, amongst other things; help foster a sense of community amongst the town’s performing musicians.

The Warrington Music Collective was established in 2006 and represents a partnership between musicians, venues, promoters, journalists and the Local Authority.

The opportunities provided by the organisation for under-18s are far in advance of most temporary work placements or school/college events in the respect that they take place every month in prominent live music venues.

Warrington’s Parr Hall has recently played host to artists such as The Arctic Monkeys, Funeral for a Friend and Reverend and the Makers.  Any young musician in the audience with aspirations to perform on that stage, needs only to start a band and they can. Once a month, every month! 

The event is called ‘Plugged’ and bookings and promotion are generally done using MySpace (www.myspace.com/pluggedvenue). Bands create their own page and use it to upload images and recordings. They add links to their friends and supporters which allows for effective promotion of the event. There isn’t an audition process as such. Any band brave enough to perform for 20 minutes is able to do so. 

Generally, they know the standard required of them before applying. If they don’t, then audience reaction, peer review and grandma’s video camera ensures that more effort is put in next time!

For the most part, having the opportunity to perform on a professional stage using hi-end sound and lighting systems provides the incentive for individuals and ensembles to rehearse. 

Being an active participant in a local community group gives young people the opportunity to regularly watch and mix with musicians other than those who attend their own school or college. This increases the number of potential collaborations and developmental opportunities at an early stage in their career.

Alongside Performers, we also support Performance Enablers. The Plugged event will, we hope, provide a springboard for future Promoters, Stage Managers, Tour Managers, Road Crew, Sound and Lighting Engineers, Security and Front of House Staff. In May 2008, students from the local high school, Sir Thomas Boteler, took an active role in the complete planning, promotion and management of an event.

They booked the venue, created a promotional website, designed the poster, liaised with the performers, balanced the PA mix, operated the lighting desk, worked alongside security staff and filmed the event for live broadcast on the town’s internet TV channel (www.the-bigidea.tv).....I think that’s everything! The event was accompanied by a series of workshops, held in the school, covering subjects such as microphone placement and crowd control.

As they become older, both musicians and technical staff can begin to play an active role in the town’s wider live music scene. Paid opportunities arise for concert promoters and sound engineers who have proved their abilities and developed a good rapport with the bands that they worked alongside on the under-18s events. 

A proportion of the money raised by the events was used to establish The Warrington Music Festival that was first held in Queen's Gardens in 2007.  Following its success that year, it has now become an annual event and a key date in the town’s cultural calendar. The 2008 festival featured 30 local bands who had taken part in fundraising events throughout the year. It’s a free event that provides an opportunity for bands to perform and promote themselves to a new audience. It also provides a focal point for the whole community to work towards.

To announce the arrival of the Warrington Music Collective, we produced a 12-page, A5, full-colour fanzine to promote the live music events and the bands taking part. The idea was to create it as glossy and professional in appearance as possible on our limited budget. We felt it important that the bands looked like they were successful, signed recording artists. No one was ever referred to as being ‘local’. 

As a result, it was very well received and provided a great incentive to the bands to get involved in the Collective. The fanzine enabled us to engage more with music journalists and photographers who were desperate for a vehicle to show off their talents. A young design team put it together free of charge and it was distributed, free of charge, in local venues, pubs, rehearsal rooms and fast food outlets.

Although the physical distribution only covered approximately one square mile, it was uploaded onto its own My Space and website and attracted visitors from around the world.

Becoming the editor of a music publication presented a steep personal learning curve. I was grateful for the opportunity to be a part of something that became so successful so quickly. I learnt much about things like Fonts and CMYK and the importance of deadlines! But the biggest lesson of all came from its eventual demise. It’s true to say that I grabbed my opportunity to fail with both hands!

Because the content was presented so well, some readers from America were unaware that these were bands from one small town in the UK. Some believed that they were reading about the new wave of British talent and that we were somehow more influential than we were. 

The fanzine had been named after one of Warrington’s most prominent historical industries. Unfortunately, this was also the name of an American publication owned by one of the world’s largest publishing houses! We were served with a cease and desist order and instructed to remove all mention of the magazine from the worldwide web (Note: I haven’t used its name once!).  I informed them of the nature of our organisation as well as our limited scope and distribution, but to no avail. I then contacted a nice gentleman at a government office who advised me that the offence that we were being accused of, ‘Passing Off’, was very difficult, and therefore very costly, to both prove and defend against. ‘Don’t even think about it!’ he said. I took his advice and learned my lesson well.

Often, it’s been difficult keeping the organisation together and moving forward but the benefits for those of my students who are keen to be involved has been substantial. This year we look forward to re-launching the fanzine as well as broadening the reach of the Music Collective to other parts of the Region. New partnerships are being formed and, we hope, Music Management, Recording and Distribution will be on offer soon.

www.myspace.com/warringtonmusic

warringtonmusic at hotmail.co.uk