The UK music industry needs to do more to recognise the importance of grassroots music scenes in the UK; to take steps to make these more sustainable and encourage more people to start them. To those already doing it for themselves, this will hardly come as a surprise. Small venues are closing at an alarming rate, funding is fiercely competitive, and composers are not being equipped with the necessary skills to get started.

So how can the music industry be more supportive of these often-precarious communities of interest? To help answer this question, we need to first understand how cultures of new music are created.

Today, we are pleased to share our new research paper – The Curating Composer: Creating Cultures of New Music written by Sound and Music’s Chief Executive, Will Dutta, and Creative Project Leader, Fiona Allison.

To investigate how DIY scenes begin, Will and Fiona undertook interviews with Provhat Rahman and Ryoko Akama, founders of artist-collectives Daytimers / Dialled In and ame respectively, and Safiya Bashir and Roohi Sarwar, early adopting audiences of each scene.

The research paper identifies four common themes and presents an initial set of recommendations to the UK music industry.

This paper has been two years in the making and a few things have changed for those who contributed. ame is no longer operating Dai Hall in Huddersfield – sadly a reflection of the cold market forces that so often price out DIY spaces. On the flip side, Daytimers/Dialled In have been going from strength to strength, having recently curated a series at the Southbank Centre. Their team is continually expanding and changing so it’s worth noting that some of the key figures have changed since the interviews took place.

This paper presents a starting point for important conversations to be had across the music industry if grassroots music scenes are to flourish in the UK.

You can read the full paper, here