Engagement and Impact
By definition, many musical and cultural activities have a strongly public dimension, this goes for our musical research, the impact of which often extends well beyond the immediate academic community.
Since the late 1990s, we have made cultural and social well-being an explicit part of our agenda, and this is reflected not only the topics of our research, but also in the way we conduct it and in the range of our collaborators – not only other academic institutions but also with individuals, groups and organisations locally, nationally and internationally.
We aspire not only to share the fruits of our own research with others, but also to learn from their knowledge and experience. Hence, benefit, agency, and impact flow both ways.
Case studies
The ¡Vamos! Festival, founded in 2006 by Ian Biddle (ICMuS), Nik Barrera and Vanessa Knights, is an annual festival of music, art, film, theatre, dance, literature, cuisine, fashion, sport and education. The festival brings together artists and practitioners from all over the world to celebrate Spanish and Portuguese speaking global cultures.
From its inception, the festival has showcased a diverse range of cultural materials and practices, brought a new understanding of these global cultures to Newcastle-based audiences, and facilitated the establishment and consolidation of a range of local and global partnerships.
Partners include Newcastle University, The Sage Gateshead, Northumbria University, Newcastle, Gateshead and North Tyneside Councils, The Spanish Government, The Mexican Government and was funded by Newcastle University, Arts Council England, The Instituto Camões, The Spanish Embassy to the UK and others.
Ian Biddle was active in ¡Vamos! up to 2011 and had a key role in the first three festivals, drawing on his research expertise in Hispanic and Lusophone musical cultures, and contributing to the programming and organisation.
To date, the festival has achieved total audience figures exceeding 45,000.
Read more about the festival on the ¡Vamos! Festival website
Goffredo Plastino, Reader in Ethnomusicology at ICMuS, and curator of the Italian Collection for New York based Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), has been central in the repatriation of materials made by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (1915–2002) in Naples and in Cinquefrondi (Calabria). This collection includes field recordings and related materials produced by Lomax in Italy in 1954–5. For further details visit ACE's website.
This repatriation is an aspect of the impact of Goffedo Plastino's work as a leading Lomax scholar. His edition of texts and photographs from Lomax's Italian fieldwork (excerpts from essays, field notes, letters and scripts for BBC radio programmes) is published as the book L’anno più felice della mia vita: Un viaggio in Italia 1954–1955 (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2008), which also includes a detailed essay by Plastino.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, this project draws on the expertise of staff from Music and Fine Art as well as other parts of the university.
Newcastle University and a range of partners are exploring together how, in the current economic climate, capacity can be built within rural communities to sustain activity within the fields of visual art and music which are particularly vulnerable. The project seeks to develop creative engagement with rural communities through arts and music; to catalyse networks with local arts organizations; to generate opportunities for creative practitioners; and to enhance digital capabilities.
ICMuS has well established connections with South Asian communities in the North East of England, and longstanding associations with arts organisations responsible for promoting South Asian musics and related arts practices. These include Kalapremi, GemArts and Pakistan Cultural Society, with whom we have co-promoted performances and workshops.
More recently, these organisations, along with Saarang – Arts and Cultures and The Sage Gateshead, have worked in partnership with us on the AHRC-funded ‘Musics of South Asia’ (Principal Investigator, David Clarke) which scopes out the present picture of South Asian musics in the region, as well as future ethnographic possibilities. This project provides a good example of how our research concerns and external engagements go hand in hand.
‘Indriya’ is another collaborative network, involving University staff, students inside and outside the University, and individual community members. It has promoted musical events bringing together all these parties – most notably a three-day workshop with international renowned khyāl vocalists Rajan and Sajan Misra.
ICMuS also promotes the work of Hindustani classical musicians Vijay Rajput (vocal) and Shahbaz Hussain (tabla) – performers on the national and international stage who teach ICMuS students, and help provide a bridge to wider communities and networks beyond the University. They are also research collaborators, acting as ethnographic respondents, as well as helping us produce outputs such as CDs and a projected guidebook on rāgas.
This project is the initiative of ICMuS Senior Lecturer Dr Nanette De Jong, and emerges out of her ethnomusicological researches into African and Afro-Caribbean musical cultures. Her fieldwork on African ritual established a social infrastructure that facilitated this major intervention. Through partnerships with local cultural sectors and NGOs in Southern Africa, SACL is changing people’s lives both economically and in terms of their well being. A distinctive element of SACL is Dr De Jong’s collaboration with community members in the research process itself, by way of co-authored articles. ICMuS undergraduates have also participated in cultural exchanges with SACL.