As the festival season comes into prominence, thoughts of milling about in fields listening to new sounds, seeing new sites and generally being humans together in one place comes into being. Looking ahead through the steamy (hopefully) months to September, a beautiful time of the year which also can feel slightly melancholic. Kids back to school, teachers back to school, nights starting to draw in. Whistful for Spring’s hopeful flavours. So what better way than to elongate the summer than partake in two gigs at the lush Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis. Fulu and Hannah Williams are two of my favourite live acts, artists breaking boundaries and exuding music innovation and brilliance. Two of the best gigs you will see this year. Each will be masked and unmasked. Mysterious and real. Guaranteed by East Devon Soul.
East Devon Soul Festival is a community music event with sustainability and revitalisation at its heart, bringing opportunities for local and national artists to perform in the seaside location of Seaton, East Devon, utilising available resources and infrastructures. The festival will feature multi genre eclectic music from local and national artists, crossing genre divides but all joined by the concept of soul, music that moves, has humanity and expression. All in collaboration with local venue owners and community groups.
Ethos
Seaton in East Devon is a town with multiple underused venues, a lack of activity but with the infrastructure to support a creative ecosystem. Sitting between the more vibrant towns of Lyme Regis and Sidmouth, Seaton has been left behind.
The aim of the East Devon Soul Festival is to bring music to the town to support socioeconomic enhancement, providing culture and economic life, encouraging people to come in and support local businesses. East Devon Soul Festival will generate an uplift in culture for the town, providing hope and opportunity for future events to occur and release the creative potential of the region, benefitting a wide demographic, including young people, families, older residents, and those who may otherwise have limited access to arts and live music due to financial, geographic, or social barriers.
East Devon Soul Festival will offer opportunities for local musicians and performers to showcase their talents, promote wellbeing through shared cultural experiences, and strengthen social connections in the community. Through collaborations with schools, local businesses, and community groups, East Devon Soul will also provide volunteering, training, and educational opportunities to encourage participation in event production and the wider creative industries.
Sustainability is a key driver for the East Devon Soul Festival. We want people to have a great time in a wonderful location whilst leaving as little carbon trace as possible. Underutilised venues will be opened up. For example, the iconic Seaton Tramway can be transformed into a beautiful 500 capacity venue. The Old Picturehouse Cinema becomes a hub for global funk music. The Hideaway Cafe at the far end of the promenade a venue for late revellers, with DJ’s spinning electronic House or Drum and Bass. The beach front Tide Cafe will have acts performing on its balcony.
Incentives will be provided to travel to the festival by green transport. The small gauge electric tram can ferry people in from campsites or Bed and Breakfasts of the nearby villages of Colyford or Colyton. Gas buses will be used to connect the nearest train station at Axminster with Seaton, a 20-minute journey. Electric tuk tuk’s will bring spice to East Devon life, a novel way of entering the festival from local villages. Arrival by bike and foot will be encouraged through elements of VIP access, food and accommodation discounts.
Line Up
The music ethos for the East Devon Soul Festival is quality eclectic and inclusive. Music for everyone but with a cohesive narrative, where bands featuring female and non-binary musicians are encouraged. Upcoming acts who will engage and educate audiences from across the spectrum, classical to electronic dance music, jazz, funk, soul and folk. East Devon Soul will have appeal for all ages and tastes. From string quartets to New Orleans Soul, Jungle and Grime to Jazz. Music is naturally eclectic, and the festival will showcase this glory, providing opportunities for local artists and showcases for acts brimming on the edge of stardom. The common denominator is that all acts will be approved by the East Devon Soul team, unleashing years of experience across the music industry to bring a festival for the local masses.
Some of the artists already lined up to play include artists we have programmed previously including Acantha Lang, Dr Meaker, Buena Bristol Social Club, Kirris Riviere and the Delta du Bruit, Hannah Williams and the Affirmations, Moscow Drug Club, the Jazz Defenders, Revelation Roots, The Egg and Fulu.
Spinning tunes in pop up venues across Seaton will be top artists including legendary DJ Krust, Queen Bee, Beatles Dub Club and the Allergies.
Seaton
The seaside town of Seaton sits on the South coast of the UK, just inside East Devon from the Dorset border, flanked by its better-known siblings Lyme Regis and Sidmouth.
Seaton has a natural aspect, sitting at the end of a wide valley, flanked by beautiful countryside, beaches and cliffs. The town itself has many underused facilities including lots of available venues, outside spaces, some with seating and power, plenty of parking and reasonable transport links. Unlike its bordering brethren, Seaton is never overrun by tourists in the summer months due to a lack of historic buildings or perceived beauty. There is a flow to the way that you can circle the town, making it an ideal location for a festival.
Automatic replies have been on. A moment to leave the working world behind, turn off the email and let the brain relax. It can take a few days for the mind to stop thinking about everyday issues and problems. You need to try and leave in a way where there are no issues overhanging which might eat into your brain, not allow you to fully relax. Our worlds are so overcome by earning a living, running projects, administration, bureaucracy, the needs of others, thinking about your job, looking for another job, friends, families, football teams. We all need a break, reset, get alternative perspectives which will then feed into our daily working worlds. The leisure process relies on us taking holidays, getting away from the daily grind to experience new worlds. A time to leave the screen, explore new cultures, sit by the pool, swim, read, wander, contemplate, talk, make new friends, cares gradually leaving your self as detachment from your daily routine and objects starts to nurture the soul. There is power in leaving work for periods of time, allowing your company or project to function even though you are not there. It shows trust in others. It is human to want to feel indispensable but allowing others to step up provides strength to organisations. Like a reserve goalkeeper in football, an unknown quantity until they are given the chance to perform under pressure. Give youth a chance. Managers nervous about their own precarious positions so afraid to experiment, to take a chance. It shows a lack of conviction in their own ways of working. But you can unleash them, from sitting on the side lines they take their moment, usurp the incumbent, become number one. Roy of the Rovers stuff. Experiment. Try things you never dared to consider. Do goalkeepers really need a break though, standing around watching. Goalkeepers are said to be mad, probably something to do with coping with the abuse they receive from behind their net. You’re s*** Agh. There aren’t many jobs where this level of personal attack is tolerated, even celebrated. All part of generating a great atmosphere. What do goalkeepers do when they go on vacation? Shout at random strangers. Stand longingly on a stretch of grass peering into the distance, wondering where all their mates have gone.
I love the winter break, a chance to stop, get ill, listen to podcasts and read. A chance to reflect on your top 20 books, albums, events, moments of the year almost past. Former conservative MP Rory Stewart is increasingly fascinating, a life spent trying to gather all information, to walk and connect with as many people as possible. His latest podcast, The long history of Ignorance, resonates in so many ways, especially episode 3 where he talks about ignorance behind creativity, the pure space where innovative work comes from which was the core theory behind my book Blank Canvas.
Why do we create stuff? Is there some inbuilt need to innovate, solidify your place in the world by manifesting? How creative practice connects to the brain is fascinating, the need to redevelop something fresh and original. Every day I have an innate need to do something creative, engage with the playful and free part of my brain. It doesn’t have to be for a long time, just at some point my inner self finds peace finds its tranquil home through scratching the creative itch.
I sometimes forge the time to create pieces of music, hours spent slaving over a hot computer based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), perfecting sections on my computer, listening over and over to the same section, distorting reality, a sample of a Buddhist chant or the gentle lapping of the sea. Although I don’t really have the attention span for attention to detail. I love developing the structure, creating the whole outline, building up parts but then you need to go back and alter elements of instruments, hi hat positioning, the velocity of the odd kick drum, automation across your strings pads, hone the reverb until it sounds glassily transparent, build echoes onto certain moments so that that they last just the right amount of time, don’t mask or clash but aid the flow. I love creating melodies, interlocking parts that flow off each other. Rhythm less so. I like a pulse, a beat, but I keep missing all those intricacies that make up a great drum track. Creating the music is one thing, but then what happens? In previous eras you could go to your local studio, record some live parts over the basic structure, mix, master and create an artefact. Get friends to help in creating cover images, get your vinyl from the Czech pressing plant. Burn straight to 1/4-inch tape then Digital Audio Tape (DAT). Avidly, we created packs and sent them off to our favourite DJ’s and record shops. If it was any good then it got played. Not necessarily in large amounts but there was some traction, a point to the creative process, validation and the thrill of your sounds heading off into the ether. Nowadays I am increasingly thinking about the pointlessness of sending music out into the world. It is a saturated market, flooded by accessibility. The point of releasing music is generally about the self, satisfying a personal need to let the world have your piece of art, more flotsam to spin around digital highways, polluting, blocking up the cloud. The conundrum that the top 100 albums feature regular favourites such as the Beatles, Stones, Neil Sedaka and Nana Mouskouri, charity shops the new record stores. Spotify has endless music. Everyone can get their music on the platform; the gatekeepers have been sidelined at this point. Emancipation for good and bad. Although you now need connected humans, DJ’s, label managers, to make an impact. To get plays, streams, downloads you need a record company or influencer to catch onto your track, to like it in a way that connects with their other material. Music promotion companies such as Label Radar or Groover provide this service, enticing you to pitch your music to an endless supply of record companies. It does work. Some of my tracks get taken up and then you are onto stage 2. Promoting your track. Friends and family will sometimes listen but reaching beyond is so difficult, battling the tide of artists who have also released music that day. Estimates range between 60 to 100k releases per day. Every day. Still, you turn on 6 Music and Marvin Gaye is thoughtfully crooning along. Wonderwall is still building. The Smile continue to sound like Radiohead, but without the iconic songs. The Gatekeepers have shut the door and thrown away the key for infinity and beyond. Wham! and Last Christmas the two top documentaries. Nostalgia, nostalgia. So, should you keep making music I hear you cry? Maybe there should be an amnesty, no more music until we have filtered out all which is blocking, a year of silence to contemplate, think where creativity is taking us all. A year for everyone to prepare, restart culture. To try new instruments that have never been part of your world, the true blank space of creativity. Innovation through ignorance. Musicking is personal, moving your head from thoughts of Top of the Pops and stardom to a process, going through something cathartic. You need to make the music for yourself, to get what is inside out. The pure self. Anyway, I still check my Spotify streams, have extreme pleasure when it says that someone is listening to my latest track Rise up by Inochi. In-Oh-Chee. Japanese for life energy, I think. Check it out on all streaming platforms. So maybe that is the point, personal satisfaction that someone somewhere gets it, gets you. Listens to you. Reads your words. Takes time to connect their life with yours. Or maybe it’s just a release, an internal burden which needs to be set free. Our lives are time stamped by the creativity of others, remembering different eras, innovative sounds or combinations of the audio and visual, stopping us in our tracks, providing new directions and thought processes. Picking a random book from the shelf of a library stack that alters your thinking, the ideas of others taking centre stage and manipulating your life in a certain direction. We need creativity to keep us sane, provide a reason for being. It is one of the most important elements so should be embraced fully, hugged to death, translating thoughts from your mind into actions. I am interested in bringing culture and creativity to rural locations, having moved from the city during the Covid pandemic, Stewart Lee’s sketch where he has friends who move to the countryside, to live an idyllic life but the reality is extreme boredom. They enquire to friends, please come and visit; bring coke. He has only a horse to talk to now. The buzz of the city replaced by peace and calm only works if you can have a balance. A vibrant life where the beauty and purity of nature and culture intersect. An internal smile. My research is based on exploring the infrastructure and innovative ideas you can collate which forms a rural scene or scenius, finding the people and locations, stories and place. A collective will to develop culture, a blank canvas on which anything can be drawn. No competition. If you create it they will come, bringing thoughts from everyone’s head into realisation. Collective intelligence and ignorance brought beautifully together.
Standing in space. Wide open away from any barrier, wall, manmade or natural object. Humans have a strange desire to be next to or under something. Taking a pee by a lonely tree. Creating an arch for your wedding, framing the lovely couple within the view. Grounding them. Why not have the wide expanse of the Arizona Desert rolling out before you, untethered, unleashed. But you take a picture by the only cactus within 20 miles. There needs to be a prop. Something to contextualise your presence on earth. Which makes it all the more bizarre that we seem so obsessed with travel into space. Space Twitter or X as it is now called. Putting the first people on the moon in 1968 then just waiting around until 2030 until we do it again. Apollo disasters halting any idea of mass migration to outer space. Elon Musk and Trump hoping to control the planet by regulating the space all around. They will charge us to breathe air before you know it. There is a fascination to searching the solar system, looking for likeminded inhabitants. So far though no one has turned up, except perhaps the clangers, trumpeting around with almost discernible presence. A fascination to look on where we all reside from a vantage point, from above, all trying to be gods, what an unbelievable waste of time and money. Fools fantasy. The planet is dying, yes, but rather than rush for the escape pod then surely it needs some TLC. People need help. Not some hair brained multi trillion dollar experiment. Imagine what you could do with the money. Applying for some small creative arts funds takes weeks of your life, jumping through ever decreasing hoops until you are squeezed by a Boa Constrictor. Review after review then your bid is deemed worthy of submission. Weeks of waiting, heart beating faster when any email pings into your inbox with the message “the quality of applications was very high…..”. And then, oh sorry you haven’t been successful this time. Please resubmit though, changing all your budget forecasts and being more realistic with your project aims. Be more realistic. Blimey. Fortunes are being spent propelling people into other orbits. You want me to be more realistic and less arty? Space travel is the ultimate rich persons folly. Pure art. Pointless. An inevitable outcome of greed and power searching. Can’t we just be happy in our communities rather than trying to form a space station on the boiling mess that is Mars. I mean a Mars a day helps you work, rest and dream of flying into the great beyond. Refugees, fleeing war torn nations battle across lands, rejected and looked down upon before reaching waters edge, crammed into flimsy life or death rafts, desperate for a life on earth. Do their kids wonder about life on mars, do they look at the moon and wish they could set foot on it or do they just wish for a safe place. Home. Not under siege. A place where they can exist. Not heading to some otherworldly final frontier but to real end points. Spaces to live within. A tree.
On 1st December 2016 I took the train from Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington. It was one of those beautiful rare clear cold sunny vibrant winter days, one where the trains ran on time, everyone had a seat and enough room to spread out. I was very excited. At 11.47 precisely I was transported to the ornate iron and glass door of a mews house in Ladbrook Grove. Just about to knock on the pane I see a figure furtively rustling around the colourful and bright studio space. Picking up objects, transferring them, bustling around with what seemed like an ever enlarging grin on his face. A medium set bald guy with a kind of beard. Ah Brian, there you are. I was transfixed. I wanted to keep just watching. I did for about 11 minutes before I walked away a few stops and came back to the door to knock. Brian was welcoming and lovely, making me a large cup of his wizards tea.
During our session, artist musician Brian Eno demonstrated Chaos Theory with his 2 handed pendulum, where simple motion on the first one creates infinite non repeated movements on the second. So, a little nudge one way can send all kinds of confusion across the next, thereby subordinating populations. Collective consciousness came through in punk, hip hop, techno, jungle etc.. through commonalities of fashion, style, music, art, taste, lifestyle, place, rhythm, dance. There are instigators, those key people who lead the collective in a certain direction. We are all swayed in some way, which can be a positive in cultural scenes but have global destroying effects in political spheres.
Brian Eno hanging out with the German electronic musicians of Kluster, provided the time and space for creative exploration by dropping out and living in their Kommune for a while. London squats were the beating heart of the emerging punk scene, and within Western Europe.
Our connections to our lands, our ancestors, spaces and places, kneeling in the soil, digging the garden, the new rock and roll as Cosey Fanni Tutti and Kim Wilde continue to show. I’m sure Brian Eno potters around hot tomato plants, winding them carefully up their strings, reaching to the sky. Little glowing red orbs gradually appearing. The Farmers Boys and Girls in their Norfolk greenhouses. Sets of allotments are the socio-cultural space for the new creatives, or the old creatives who need to be in touch with their land, the city dweller who yearns for the countryside, everyone effected by global cost of living crises, where pulling up your evening meal from the ground can offset ever rising food prices.
Roxy Music keyboard knob twiddler Brian Eno learnt about the power of humour through his art school adventures with tutor Roy Ascott. His first lessons at art school included devising personality tests, where students had to enact the opposite traits they normally displayed. For chatterbox Eno, he had to remain silent for the sessions and let other people lead projects. When becoming a record producer, Eno introduced concepts relating to getting artists out of their normal comfort zone so that they would maximise their self in performances and composition ideas, without the usual routines or trappings. The Oblique Strategy cards he created with artist Peter Schmidt contains humorous, tasks such as play with your non dominant hand, do something boring or emphasise the flaws, whilst also suggesting role play ideas to bands including pretending to be an alien funk band from the year 2055.
Brian and I had a good chat. He showed me 2 floor standing safes, saturated with notebooks, relaying pictures and concepts from years of doodling and thinking. A time bandit. Brian got on his fold up bike and scooted off for a meeting with George Monbiot. See you again Brian.
Newton’s cradle, one ball hitting another and gradually coming in sync. People come together and get more aligned often through taking the same drugs. The neural membranes aligned due to biological transfer. It is one of those things which is still slightly taboo, to talk about drugs, even though almost everyone has broken the law at some point by taking them. It could be the relatively light, sometimes called Gateway drug, of marijuana. A spliff. A relaxant in the right amount that can support mental health, whereas the wrong kind and too much is the complete opposite. Psychotic. Paranoia. Like many things in life it is the balance which is key. I go to the gym and that place is full of obsessives. People that need the hit which exercise can give. Some of my most transcendent moments have been there. Sweating and peddling in unison at a spin class, the instructor driving everyone forward, faster, more speed, as the techno track crashes through us. Group elation, laughter. Heart rates pounding through the BPM. A giddy excitement. The after glow which is followed by a gradual come down if there is no exercise, no gym the next day. It’s a good value healthy drug. Spliffs can support your creative mind, supposedly, but also dulls it, slows the memory cortex down so that you can’t actually remember anything seconds after you thought it. Obviously, there used to be the classic munchies. Young students rushing to the nearest Spar to stock up on Cadbury’s latest unhealthy balance. There is always that balance with drugs. The doing and the after. This is what causes so much pain and disaster. Lives tipped over by excess. Ecstasy brought a generation joy through the 1990s, supported by beautiful eclectic beats, Balearic, minimal, jungle, drum and bass, youth bouncing as one, underground overground dancing free. Grinning. Gurning. The up and the space to chill, doves and water. White floaty moments in love. Tuesdays were often difficult. Tetchy, doom ridden. Fetch that spliff for balance. Go to the gym. A walk in nature. Always a good cure. Other drugs such as heroin or ketamine were brutal reminders of the disasters awaiting, people let lose from their actors, floating off to other worlds, almost beyond saving. Psilocybin’s, mushrooms, magic, psychedelic experiences provided life altering moments, changing perceptions, webbing underground, connections understood, the matrix broken through. Neural change breakthroughs could provide exciting opportunities for communal health, utilised as an anti depressant, altering pathways so that the happy genes are restored, serotonin rushing through your body, generating the impetus to head back to the gym and spin.
Nottingham is an interesting place. Sat halfway up the country, home to Byron, Boots, Raleigh and lace. It is not somewhere I previously considered but starting to work with the university there and my youngest daughter going to university in the city, has brought it into focus. I met an orchestral leader and educator in the city, someone who transferred their life from LA to the East Midlands. For work, such is the joy of academia, throwing you around the world in search of nirvana. Looking for the excitement and safety in equal measures. Academic working puts your whole sense of place in another context because it provides opportunity and threat. The chance to travel around the world, put small roots down wherever the best role seems to fit. It also keeps you there though because when you start to specialise in an area the options become less apparent. You raise a family and don’t want then have to decamp somewhere else. It provides a level of paranoia, especially within the creative arts that are under attack yet again in Higher Education. Leave those teams alone. Fight alternative beings rather than going for the easy targets situated within the arts. The creative arts bring a whole range of excitement, interest and sets of skills that really traverse boundaries. Reflexivity, stamina, concentration, innovation, dedication, collaboration, humour, physicality, neuroscientific skills which are transferable or just lay in place to entertain. Local Councils like that in Birmingham or Nottingham are in financial peril, so the first they consider is to cut the arts. But these are the elements which make them, drive local industries, provide employment, set the tone of a place. Why not think about doing the reverse. Embrace the arts, place trust in their ability to lead your city to prosperity.
I am exploring the concept of scenius, the collective genius existing within scenes. Exploring the intricate parts which make up successful scenes, lifting them beyond the norm. I see the main elements as centred around hierarchies, process, experimentation, relationships and flow. The Bristol music scene as defined by bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead brought disparate parts of the city together. St Pauls and Clifton, placed in the Dug Out club and revolver records equidistant between both areas. The music resonated with the sound of the city, the Bristol hum, water sloshing underneath the pathways, providing a resonant frequency which connected with the bass music, a slow tempo with depth. An ethos based on attitude. Political protest. Standing up for the common good. Preparing to fail or anger the regular creative arts industry. Banksy. Placing faith in art. No compromise. No sellout. Each place has its own resonance, connects through natural and social factors. It’s time again to fight for the arts, to provide the new upcoming government with so much evidence that they finally support the arts once and for all, enshrines British culture with the security it needs and deserves.
7th March is world book day, the opportunity for all those with young children to spend hours scrabbling around to try and match up to their neighbours attempts, whilst the kids hope they wont be too embarrassed by it all. What fun. Like National Women’s Day or Record Store Day or Black History Month, these are all worthy concepts, supporting better lives for all. Really, though, everyday should be World Book Day. Everyday should be equality of opportunity for all day. One Day should be watched every day.
In supporting the adult focus to WBD then please have a look at my first book, Blank Canvas, soon to be followed by Creative Spheres, deep, playful, anarchic, experimental and entertaining explorations of popular culture, with creativity centrally placed.
Now time to dress up as my favourite cultural icon …..
A fresh looking Brian Eno at Watford Art College (Mid 1970s)
So I am coming to the end of finishing my second book, Creative Spheres, and as well as the relief and excitement there is also a slight feeling of loss. The work is done. Now, though, comes the tricky task of finding a publisher. Who will release a book that crosses academic and commercial arenas? It is the next mission, to find the place in the world for my latest baby. Here are the chapters…
