PRS for Music Foundation’s Women Make Music funding opportunity flyer and launch Event Management

This is the first time the Foundation has launched an open call that welcomes applications from both commissioning organisations and music creators working independently of other organisations. We needed a flyer that was bold and clear, that appealed to music creators from all genres. This white background, with elements of the Foundation’s brand colour red – and simple, clean, clear and crisp layout is proving a successful platform to communicate with the Foundation’s broad target market. It is warm, yet sophisticated and professional, yet creative. I’m really happy with how this communicates their ‘all genre’ brand.

To find out more about this funding opportunity and to see some great shots of the programme launch, that I Event Managed, at WOW festival visit the PRS for Music Foundation website.

British Music Abroad business card

We couldn’t send Laura off to represent British Music Abroad at SXSW, surrounded by impressive music industry pro’s with swanky business cards, without her own impressive business card. So, I had a little think, searched around on the interweb, had a chat to the creative genius that is Anthony Oram at We Are Hold and we came up with this – pretty neat eh?!

Here you go Laura, you can compete with the best of them now!

Big ups to JamJar Print for turning these round so quickly – and cheaply too.

 

British Music Abroad in Music Week

Hello Everyone,

I run the Communications at PRS for Music Foundation so it was an exceptionally good start to the week to have a piece about our British Music Abroad programme in Music Week. I’d like to send a special thanks out to Robert Ashton, for not only penning such a well voiced piece, but for taking the time and effort to contact myself and Laura Whitticase (British Music Abroad, Manager) to find out all the stats and facts – and for alerting us to the fact that this is a record breaking year for our support in getting UK bands to SXSW. AND Robert, you called us our correct name (everyone, we’re not PRS for Music!) so an extra huge thank you for that!

Lots more exciting news about British Music Abroad will be following soon – I’ll be sure to keep you all informed.

British Music Abroad SXSW Party
If you’re coming to SXSW make sure you check out Clock Opera, The Good Natured and Jonquil – and say Hi to Laura – at our party on Friday 18th March 12:15 – 3pm at the British Music Embassy. I’ll post up the promotional materials as soon as they’re done – quite excited about them – they’re going to look great! (Possibly the best British Music Abroad branding to date!?) For all info check out the British Music Abroad website.

And finally special thanks to everyone at British Underground and UKTI for making this funding opportunity such a success.

The power of pictures… continues!

Wow! The Michelle McMahon shot from the New Music 20×12 View Tube shoot is still working its magic. We announced the successful participants of New Music 20×12 today and the BBC included only the Michelle image. I wonder if they would have given this story a link on their Arts & Culture homepage without this photo?

Also – I discovered that the Evening Standard only covered this story back in September because of the strength of these shots.

Strong, clear, simple and appealing images can do wonders to communicate your brand more effectively – and also, as in this case, to reach platforms you would not otherwise have access to. Without these images we would not have achieved such high level, mainstream coverage.

The power of pictures is not to be underestimated!

Sky Arts At New Music Award – Promo Film Producer and Awards Ceremony Event Manager

It is with great excitement that I present to you Sky Arts At New Music Award – the film! (click on the image below to be taken to the Sky Arts HD website to view the film). The full length version will be shown throughout the month on Sky Arts HD 1 & 2 – and is premiering this Sunday at 6:30pm on Sky Arts HD 1.

It has been an absolute joy to produce this film – working with the Sky Arts HD crew and team – and all the other New Music Award artists, judges and supporters – past and present. A massive thank you to all of you. It’s been a lot of hard work, but a lot of fun and everyone at New Music Award HQ is really happy with the result. The film clearly and powerfully demonstrates why the PRS for Music Foundation New Music Award is so important and why it’s so relevant. For all info about the New Music Award and this year’s winner – The Organ of Corti – visit the Foundation’s website.

As well as being a powerful tool of communication for showing exactly what the New Music Award is about, it’s great to have documentation of the New Music Award 2010 ceremony at the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed by Jean Nouvel – a ceremony that I Event Managed. A special thanks go out to Katie and all the team at Serpentine Gallery for making us so welcome and being so accommodating and very patient with all our filming and ceremony requirements – and for providing us with such a beautiful – and perfect space for the PRS for Music Foundation New Music Award 2010 ceremony.

The power of pictures…

Cultural Olympiad
PRS for Music Foundation is leading New Music 20×12, 1 of the 4 Cultural Olympiad music programmes for the London 2012 Games. This is pretty exciting for me as I’m a big fan of the Games and it’s a real honour to be playing some part in the London 2012 celebrations.

How do we illustrate Olympics and music?
The Foundation wanted to announce that the call for applications to be part of New Music 20×12 was live, but they had absolutely no imagery or identity for this campaign, so I suggested we needed a selection of strong images we could distribute to press and media, and put on the Foundation website – images that firmly aligned New Music 20×12 with the London 2012 games.

The right ingredients:
All I needed was a sunny day and a varied group of welcoming people, with various instruments, photographed in front of the Olympic stadium. Fortunately this wasn’t a daunting challenge as The View Tube is perfectly placed to get photos with the Olympic stadium creating the backdrop. Beautiful. I phoned round some fantastically helpful friends and family, put on my Creative Director hat and off we went to East London.

Results: The power of pictures!
Wow! So we announced this just 3 days ago and we’ve had some great coverage – in no small part due to the fantastic photos we achieved at the View Tube. The weather was beautiful which most definitely helped. Everyone in the pictures looks great but the firm favourite with the media has most definitely been actress Michelle McMahon (holding the violin). Thanks to Jack, Jade, Oma, Andrew, Simon, Michelle and especially to Grace for providing so many of the instruments – and to Mary Cork for the photos. Great work guys! Homepage of London2012.com is no mean feat!

Kerry Leatham by Chris Kennedy

We’re looking for the right visual for Kerry. She and I had discussed trying out a look on the more fashion side of rock and roll. Kerry is naturally very striking and we felt it was worth exploring a slightly ‘crisp’, fashion edge to her image – to really make the most of her natural beauty. I approached Chris Kennedy – an extremely talented young fashion photographer – to see if he was interested in Kerry’s look and if he was interested in doing a shoot. He was really intrigued by Kerry and the imagery that we had been playing with up till now. He was up for doing a shoot and seeing what he could bring to her look.

Along with the exploration of Kerry’s look we also wanted to provide some shots for her brand ambassadorships with Adidas and Fred Perry.

I think Chris is tiny bit of a photographic genius and I have to say I’m amazed by his results – Kerry looks amazing, yet still very ‘rock & roll’ and edgy. Kerry, I have to be honest, felt the images were a little too… ‘styled’ for where we want her look to go. Either way, we all agree Chris has worked some serious magic! Thank you sir.

Peter Conway ‘Breakthrough’ single promo design

Continuing the brand from Chains The EP:
Peter was keen to keep the success of the first release’s (see my post on Chains The EP)  traditionally classic, legendary feel, with a modern edge – but he wasn’t so keen on appearing on the cover of this next single.

What we wanted to communicate:
We wanted a cover that was visually exciting, but not too slick – we really didn’t want this to look like a major label release – we wanted to keep it indie, a certain amount of ‘homemade’ feel to it. This was early in Peter’s career and we wanted to communicate the fact that this single was something Peter had recorded and created with people he trusted and loved – not manufactured in a huge recording studio, surrounded by clever machinery and the latest production technology.

Then we saw it!
One day sitting at Peter’s house, going over designs I saw his reel-to-reel player.
“What’s that?” I asked, “Does it work? It looks amazing!”
“Oh that..” replied Peter, “Yeah, sure it works, I recorded the first ever version of Breakthrough on it..”
!!!
So there we had it – the visual we were looking for. I had it photographed by the legendary documentary photographer Daniel Meadows (who’s beautiful black & white portraits from the 70s were used this spring on the Starsailor album ‘All The Plans‘ – and accompanying single ‘Tell Me It’s Not Over‘.).

Then I played around with the photos a bit on Photoshop and hey presto, we had our promo! It’s something you want to pick up, hold, inspect and listen to, even if you’ve not heard of the artist on the cover – the perfect combination for a promo CD.

Kerry Leatham ‘A Different Light’ music video

This is the first music video for young singer-songwriter Kerry Leatham, Directed by Sam Wilkins, DOP: Dave Litchfield. I have to say, this was the most relaxed shoot I’ve ever been on. Sam was as calm as a Hindu cow throughout – respect!

Kerry, myself, all the management team and record label are really, really happy with what we achieved. Kerry looks amazing, this is a great introduction to a genuine talent and it dovetails beautifully with the adventurous, independent and ‘real’ elements of Kerry’s brand and her Guerrilla Busker activites. Well done everyone!

Peter Conway ‘Chains The EP’ CD packaging design

Hello,

We just couldn’t find the right aesthetic for Peter’s first release through Decca. We’d had loads of pitches and ideas in, but just couldn’t find the right one. We needed a visual that reflected the classical nature of Peter’s voice and music – a look that firmly rooted Peter in a tradition of pure talent, soul and depth. Yet at the same time we needed to create an image that was engaging and exciting to a modern audience..

Then I looked through a whole lot more photos from a day when Peter had gone out with a mate and a camera around Conway Street…

I saw this image and knew this was the right direction to take. I turned off my phone and emails and spent far too many hours rebuilding parts of this image (brick by brick!!) to make it work as a CD cover, and hours of  fiddling around with my rudimentary Photoshop skills to make this work, but finally we have it! And I have to say, I’m really proud. I love it, Peter loves it, management love it and Decca love it – grrrreat!

(This is me taking ‘Product Management very literally!’)

Check out Peter Conway’s MySpace page here. If you ask him nicely he may even have a copy of this EP to sell you.