A live music map for Birmingham in times of COVID-19
Republished by ECBN from: PEC / Text by: Patrycja Rozbicka, Adam Behr and Craig Hamilton
Recent research from UK Music has highlighted the economic contribution that music tourism has made to the UK economy, with the headline figures showing that 29.8 million people attended live music events – with 11.2 million of them classed as music tourists – generating £4.5 billion in direct and indirect spend and sustaining 45,530 full time jobs. Out of that, £211 million remains in the West Midlands. Due to Brexit and COVID-19, the figures post 2020 will undoubtedly be affected, which will have a knock-on effect for Birmingham’s live music sector in particular and the city’s music industry more generally.
The Birmingham Live Music Project (BLMP) interactive map and database of live music venues in Birmingham launched on 1st June. The map was developed in collaboration between Aston University (Patrycja Rozbicka), Birmingham City University (Craig Hamilton) and Newcastle University (Adam Behr) as part of research that aims to produce the first ever comprehensive map of Birmingham’s music venues. The project aims also to map ‘live music ecology’ and illuminate the interdependencies across different local, national and global actors. The BLMP is part of the ‘UK Live Music Industry in a post-2019 era: A Globalised local perspective’, which is one of the PEC’s first commissioned research projects.
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