Key points:
- Libraries should reflect the fact that pop music is a thrilling art form loved by young people the country over
- Libraries have as much right, if not more, as cultural powerhouses to stage live events
- Allow young people to lead on the project and be its key ambassadors
Pop music is hugely important to people of all ages but especially the young. Here, more than anywhere, pop music has the power to thrill. It is immediately inclusive; exciting and socially binding and can offer a route out of the everyday and the mundane. For these simple reasons alone, it is important that libraries reflect the fact that this is a cultural medium that young people consume and enjoy every day, via all possible means, and with huge visceral passion and appetite.
Great pop music is important. But, then, so are libraries. Libraries are hugely important as traditional vessels and deliverers of culture. Let's combine the two and create a simple solution for people. Offering young people what they love and consume most in the kind of venue they use least is one of the clearest reasons for staging live music in libraries. Pop music soundtracks the lives of the young - libraries should reflect that.
Five main principles
To add in more reasons for Get It Loud In Libraries (GILIL) consider the relationship between public libraries and contemporary music. The music industry's BPI agreement determines that public libraries only receive new releases in CD form 90 days after they are released commercially. In terms of libraries being at the cutting edge of new music delivery, it leaves us severely disadvantaged as spearheads of contemporary culture. In the download age, in the brand new music landscape at least, it renders us prehistoric.
Sure GILIL was designed primarily to give people, especially young people who love great contemporary rock and pop, a good time, but also a meaningful experience in a library; one that will leave them better disposed to library use in the future. Its ability to modernise the modern music delivery of libraries is also central to its themes, ethos and success.
The five main principles of GILIL are:
- To offer teenagers, hard to reach groups and culturally attuned people who, nevertheless, don't habitually visit libraries a unique modern and safe experience through live performance in a traditional library setting, and develop this audience accordingly.
- To break out of the library comfort zone, pitch our marketing drive in the high street, in major media streams and online in youth communication channel websites like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace and to engage with, diversify and develop this fresh audience.
- To break down outdated perceptions upheld by the young that libraries are irrelevant and confidently reposition the library in people's imaginations, making a bold visual statement that drives the message home that libraries are a cool alternative place to access great music, novels, information and art.
- To showcase the best new and old bands around in a thoroughly unique setting as a successful format for delivering music.
- To allow the project and its inherent sub-brand and drivers to better showcase and profile the greater library landscape
That's the basic and sustainable premise for the development of the project. By no means is this project anti-book. The project showcases the book. Libraries are treasure troves of great literature, stories and fiction, but the bricks and mortar that support them also make fantastic community hubs that in turn make special alternate venue space.
It is this superb potential for re-branding and repositioning as after-hours culture clubs that allows live music in libraries to flourish, succeed and make the critical impacts: young people run front of house ticket sales, PA to the bands, and the merchandise and refreshment stalls; the acoustics are wonderful - all those wonderful books; the access is without measure and open armed (no ID needed for young people, family friendly); and the vibe is thrilling: How could something so of the moment be happening here on our doorstep?
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Photo credit: Frances Ross